“God. You…are…un…belie…vable,” I choked out.
“You have no idea,” he replied.
Helplessly doubled over, hands on my knees, I watched as Chac dissolved into the shadows of the thick vegetation. I realized I was no longer on any trail. I pivoted several times. Which direction now? Every damned tree and plant looked the same. Green, green, and more leafy green. It was like being trapped in a huge spinach salad.
“Some guide. Now I’m lost.” I grabbed my aching sides.
“No, you’re not lost. You are near, Emma, I can hear you.”
My heart fell through my stomach, into my knees, and to the bottom of my feet.
Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. This was it. All of the planning and years of dreaming. And believe me, I’d had every kind of dream imaginable. Guy turning out to be a gargoyle, swallowing me whole. Then there was the one where he was a Poltergeist and pulled me into a giant cave where I was trapped for all eternity with evil spiders, although sometimes the spiders were clowns. I hated clowns. Too happy. That’s not normal.
Then there was the dream where his body matched the voice, and I melted into a puddle on the ground, then evaporated.
I cautiously pushed through the next wall of vines and brush. The jungle opened up, and I saw it: the cenote.
***
The remaining light from the sky filtered through the trees, creating dancing speckles of light over the surface of the deep dark green pool that sluggishly churned with rotting leaves and other floating debris.
I shuddered at the sight of it.
It was enormous—about fifty yards across with a steep one-story drop to the calm surface. I’d seen photos of cenotes; they were usually covered with tiny plants and vines along the sides. This one was different. It repelled the vegetation, and the limestone walls were perfectly smooth and coated with a thick green slime.
“Hello?” I called out. “Guy? Where are you? I don’t see the ruin.” Please don’t let this be a trap. Please.
“Emma, sweetheart, this is the hard part, but I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you?”
“Jump in the water.”
“Whyyy?” I was frozen on the outside, but inside, there was a personal apocalypse going down.
“I’m inside, Emma. You need to be in the water when you say the words.”
My whole world inverted once more. Could this get any worse? All this time he’d been lying? “Wait. So, there’s no ruin? And now I’m supposed to still trust you and jump into the water?”
“Yes.”
“No way! I’m not getting in there,” I said. Then the reality, the horror of the situation hit me full force. In short, what the hell was I doing rummaging through the jungle in a foreign country, about to free a man whose origins were completely unknown to me? A man who’d tormented me in every way possible; a man I couldn’t stop feeling I belonged to, yet needed to escape?
Yup. It’s official. Emma Keanne, is insane.
“I’m sorry I lied, but you would’ve never come if I said the truth.”
“Damn straight. Wait. Where…are…you?” I peered over the edge—morbid curiosity—but didn’t see anyone inside. I gasped, covering my mouth. “No. No. No.” This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be possible! It was the one scenario I’d never thought of. All along I believed he was real, that he was not a figment of my imagination. But I was wrong—Flat Earth Club wrong. There was no one there!
I dropped to my knees and began to bawl uncontrollably. This was bad.
“Why are you crying? You can do this, Emma.”
“Because there’s no one there. I’m a lunatic!”
“No, you’re not! Listen to me—”
“Prove it!” I screamed between hysterical sobs. “Prove this isn’t some psychotic episode.”
“No, Emma! No. Let me out so I can explain! You’re not crazy, I promise.”
I ground my fists into the sides of my head. “What? Weren’t you going to explain everything now? Because now would be a super-duper fucking good time, my friend.”
“You’re being irrational. Let me out. We’ll talk this through.”
The light bulb, albeit a glaringly red and bursting with giant flames, flickered on. “Oh, I get it!” I screamed at the water. “You never intended to tell me anything! Shit! Why am I talking to a pond? Oh, God!”
I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep, the fear, months of stress, or the fact I was talking to an empty sludge pond, but I was certain my head was about to grow rocket boosters and blast off my body.
I. Was. Snapping.
“No. You know what? I don’t even care anymore. It doesn’t fucking matter. Maybe I should just jump in and die! It would be better than living the rest of my life in a nut farm or with you!”
“Emma, calm down. Someone’s going to hear you.”
“Who? Who the hell is going to hear some crazy woman screaming in the middle of the God damned jungle?”
Hiccup! Hiccup! “Oh, great. Just what I needed to complete the moment.”
“Emma, I—”
“No, screw you. I’m through with your mind games. Or…my mind games? I don’t even know anymore!” Hiccup!
“Emma, I can prove I’m real, that you’re not crazy. Jump in, and you’ll see me.”
What if I was right? Or, what if this was how my grandmother died? Lured by some insane voice to the isolated Mexican jungle where she was told to jump into a Mayan pool like this one. I envisioned her in my mind, babbling to herself and swatting away the mosquitoes while having this exact same conversation as she stood over the edge of this very same pool.
“No,” I said aloud, contradicting my hysterical-self. “She wasn’t crazy.” She was the sanest person I knew. And if she were here now, she’d say, ‘Holy Virgin, child. Are you out of your crazy-loca head? Go home, this instant!'”
And, dammit, she’d be right!
“Okay. I’ll jump, but on one condition. If you’re real, I want you to disappear. I never want to hear your voice again. I don’t even want to see you, or know what you are. You disappearing from this moment forward will be my proof of my sanity. Got it!?”
“You can’t mean that. I have answers for you, Emma. I can help you find out what happened to your grandmother. I can make up for all of the pain I have caused you.”
Impossible. A lifetime of therapy wouldn’t heal the damage he’d done. The best I could hope for was to be able to fake normal.
“Yes. I can mean it.” If you’re real, then I can’t be whole with you in my life. I’ll always be conflicted—wanting to be with you, wanting to be free of you, I wanted to say, but couldn’t risk exposing myself for all the obvious reasons.
“For years, I’ve been your prisoner, and I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but it ends today. I don’t ever want to hear your voice again. I want you gone. Promise now, or I won’t take one more step.”
“Emma. I know I’ve pushed you, but we’ve come this far, and so much is riding on you.”
“No. Promise now, or I turn around.”
“I must see you…safely back.” There was a long silent pause. “I will not promise.”
“I’m out of here! And don’t try talking to me anymore because the first thing I’m doing is checking into the psych ward where they’re going to medicate me so heavily that I won’t even hear myself. I bet Mexico has great drugs!”
“Emma, you have to—”
“No. You shut the hell up! You’re not even real. You never were!”
“Emma, I’m sorry, but you’ve given me no other choice.”
I felt something soft and furry rub against my leg. “Holy—” I stumbled back, falling to the ground.
Inches from my face, a giant black cat hissed, its bright green eyes boring a hole through my soul. I quickly eyed the water. It was looking much more inviting now; cats didn’t like water, right? I slowly rose to my knees, holding out my hands. “Good kitty. Stay kitty.” I inched toward the edge of th
e cenote. It was a long way down, but maybe I could—
The cat took a small step forward and displayed its incisors.
“Never mind!” I jumped and hit the water sideways with a loud slap!, plunging several feet under. My head broke through the surface where I saw the jaguar leaning over the edge, preparing to pounce in after me. No doubt it wanted to play “bobbing for humans.”
My heart pounded furiously, and for a moment, I forgot all about my little insanity dilemma.
I looked for something to throw—a fallen branch or magic floating rock—but there were just my sneakers.
Treading water, I awkwardly used one foot to pry off a shoe and chucked it at the furry beast. It hissed as my shoe hit the concave wall of the cenote several feet below. “Dammit!” I slipped off the other and overthrew. “Christ. This can’t be happening!” I cried. The cat was leaning over the edge; if it didn’t jump, it might fall in, anyway.
I did several three-sixties in the water, hoping to find something—anything—to throw. But there was nothing except…
Near the wall directly behind me, a miniature drum-shaped object bobbed in the water. I swam toward it and tried to hug it into my chest. The jar, ten inches wide and made of a dark gray ceramic material, rolled. I maneuvered the jar closer and got a firm grasp. In one adrenaline charged motion, I kicked with all my strength and hurled it over my head at the cat.
I nailed it right on the head. “Yes!” The hairy monster scampered away, deciding I wasn’t a worthy snack.
I felt utterly ecstatic for two glorious seconds until I realized I was still in hot water...or, funky cenote water. Whichever.
I pivoted in the pool, sadly noticing there was no way to climb out. With its ten-foot-high inward sloping walls, slick with algae, I was stuck. “Lord love a duck,” I muttered. “Can this get any worse?”
Silence.
“Guy? Hello?” But there was no Guy, no humming, no toucans. It was beyond eerie. “Guy? Are you there? What do I do now? I’m stuck here.”
Again, nothing but sweet silence. A lovely way to end my life. Except, I wasn’t ready to die yet.
Something tickled the back of my brain, something I was supposed to do. Something Guy had told me.
Yes! The phrase!
That fleeting thought lasted two more seconds until I realized that ready or not, I was going to die. The water began swirling violently like someone had triggered the auto-flush—pulling me down. I flopped my arms wildly in the water, but it took less than a minute before it won.
Chapter TWELVE
When Emma hit the water, Guy poised himself like a racehorse waiting to explode from the gate; the anticipation was almost unbearable. So many years he’d suffered inside this frigid, watery prison, cut off from his world, tormented by the physical comforts—air and warmth—just outside his reach.
Worst of all, that torment had deeply scarred him, weakened him. He’d once been free of the smorgasbord of dysfunctional neediness that plagued humans. Now, he was filled with it. The need to kill his enemy, to punish them for hurting Gabriela. The need to see Emma with his own eyes and touch her. Perhaps, even beg her forgiveness for the pain he’d caused her.
The need to feel the fibers of his world tugging through his soul. Hell, he was even tormented by the need for food. He salivated, thinking about the delectable human treats he’d once prepared in the kitchen of his human home in Italy.
Weak. Weak. Weak, he thought, hoping that time would heal him and return him to his former, heartless deity-self.
But he doubted it. Seriously doubted it. Sharing his life with a human female for twenty-two years had drastically, permanently changed him. Fate always took such pleasure in teaching humility, even to the gods.
Right now, for example. A minute had ticked by without incident. Emma must have recited the phrase already. Something must be wrong. The portal remained closed.
But why? Emma had enough of their blood in her veins to open it. Well, so he thought. Could he have been wrong? But he was never wrong. He’d had seven sufferable decades to think through every possible explanation of how the cenote’s curse functioned, and only one made sense: the Maaskab had used dark energy to shift the chemistry of the water, thereby altering the charge of energy needed to complete the final step of his transformation into a tangible state.
Unable to solidify, he could not enter the physical world nor could he create the sound waves necessary to reopen the portal. And while humans didn’t have the necessary physical make up to open the portal, Emma had enough of their light that she should’ve been able to open the portal and not end up trapped herself. After all, she wasn’t bound to the cenote to create her form.
Dammit! He’d been so sure this would work. Perhaps his mind had rotted with cursed water.
Guy screamed and struggled violently under the water, unable to make her hear him. His hand passed through her leg as if he were merely a ghost. They were both in the pool, but in two different dimensions. Emma would die in this horrible place, and Guy would watch helplessly, the memory forever branded into his essence. He’d lose the only being in the world he felt truly connected to.
“Emma! Emma!” he screamed, pounding his fists on the underside of the water’s surface. He knew his efforts were useless, but he couldn’t stop trying.
“Emma, if you can hear me, I am sorry, sweetheart. I never meant for this to happen.” He floated at her side, hoping by some miracle of the gods something would change, that she’d somehow sense him. Useless.
He watched with intensity while Emma removed her shoes and chucked them at the cat he’d summoned to herd her into the water.
The cat, a lovely female jaguar, had been his only other companion these last years. Birds, toucans especially, and monkeys came to visit every so often, but were more interested in viewing him like an exhibit at the zoo. But the cat, who could hear his words like all other animals, loved to talk about philosophy and the art of the hunt. She was quite entertaining. Luckily, she’d agreed to take part in his back-up plan without eating Emma. Votan knew there was a solid chance Emma’s nerves would get the best of her and would, therefore, need coaxing to take the plunge. He’d been right about that, but not about anything else, and he hated himself for it.
He closed his eyes to send the animal away, but before he gave the instruction, Emma threw something else, and the cat yelped.
Suddenly, the water began to swirl into a liquid tornado, pulling him up. He flailed his arms and kicked with every ounce of anger and frustration stored in his human-like body.
Breaking free from the water’s grip, a scream of joy escaped his lips. Years of being unable to touch the air were suddenly over. His chest heaved. His lungs expanded. His skin tingled to life.
He gazed up to the sky and soaked in the now un-muted colors of the trees. Green. So much lush, delightful, vivid green!
“You did it!” He frantically twisted his body, treading water. “Emma? Dammit, woman. Where the hell are you?” She certainly hadn’t left the cenote; the walls were too slick. But she was no longer bobbing along the surface. Where could she be?
Then the realization struck him. He glanced down into the dark water and cringed. “Son of a bitch!”
Despite the seventy years of constant pain from being imprisoned underwater, he sucked in a lung full of air and dove into the watery abyss. His fingers stretched and clawed, plowing through darkness. All light faded from view as he ran one hand along the jagged wall of the pool as a guide.
Hair. Guy felt something fibrous and stringy.
He took hold of the tangled mass until he managed to get a solid grip on her waist. Guy battled his way through the water, kicking hard to reach the light above. As his head broke through the surface a second time, Guy took his first glimpse of Emma. His heart nearly stopped. She was exactly as he’d imagined. Every lash. Every freckle. Even the tiny dip in the curve of her ear. She was…a goddess.
There will be time for admiring her later, he scolded
himself.
He took hold of her wrist, and then gave a powerful kick, managing to catch the ledge of the pool with his fingertips. She felt like a heavy rag doll, completely lifeless. He gently slid her up over the edge and laid her down in the dirt. Her face, though cold and blue, was exquisite. He pressed his lips to hers (and tried not to think of how he wanted to kill the men who’d looked at them when he could not) then gave her a breath, then another. Her body still had life pulsing inside, but it was fading fast.
“Don’t go, Emma. Stay here!” he commanded, prying open her eyes with his fingers. “You can’t leave. Do you hear me, woman!”
He breathed into her again before turning her to the side. Using his two hands like a vice, he pushed the water from her lungs and then gave her one more breath before she coughed violently. She cracked opened her eyes.
Dark green—so lovely.
She stared directly into his eyes, and something inside him ignited, froze, stopped and started, all at once. He simultaneously felt rage for having been deprived of the vision of her his entire existence and gratitude for finally having her in his arms. It was all wrong. It was so right. This was not good.
Was Emma the woman from Cimil’s vision? Because she most certainly was the one from his, and he could easily see how such a beautiful, smart, feisty woman could “emasculate” him, as Cimil had put it.
Gods dammit. Yes, yes, throw in pining and groveling, too. I may never be able to let her go, now, he thought. Then, she will truly hate me.
Her long wet strands of copper curls clung to her face. He cleared them away and gathered her fragile body in his arms. She smiled peacefully, and the most luscious wave of joy washed over him at his realization. They’d done it. She would live, and he was free.
“I’m back,” he growled to the sky. “And there will be hell to pay for not coming to my aid. Do you hear me? Hell to pay!”
Chapter THIRTEEN
With his golden face beaming, the man smiled as he stroked my sopping wet hair and cradled me against his warm, smooth chest. “I love this dream,” I said with a breathy voice, then stretched my arms above my head, gazing happily into the most striking set of luminescent, turquoise green eyes I’d ever seen.
Accidentally in Love With a God (2012) Page 7
