Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  Then again, so had her father, Ambrose Ledbetter, and he’d disappeared into this same rain forest more than five months ago.

  Ambrose was missing, presumed dead, according to both the nearest consulate and the university where he’d held court as one of the world’s foremost Maya nists. Granted, it wasn’t unusual for Ambrose to lose track of a week or two when he was in the field, but five months was too much. He wouldn’t have stayed out in the field that long, even if he was hot on the trail of his own personal obsession, a mythical group of warrior-priests called the Nightkeepers, who were supposed to protect mankind from ancient demons in the last few years before the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012.

  Some people—mostly movie producers and nut jobs, as far as Sasha could tell—believed that the zero date signaled the end of time itself. But Ambrose hadn’t just believed in the end-time; he’d believed that the legends of the Nightkeepers were real. For the most part, he’d kept the psychosis under wraps in his outside life, playing the part of a sane man, and playing it well. At home, though, he’d let it rip. Which was why Sasha had eventually stopped going home. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her father in more than eight years, save for a single brief encounter over the summer. The day after that he’d disappeared into the rain forest.

  Missing, presumed dead. The words banged around inside her head as she wormed her way along the narrow trail she’d found partly from childhood memories, partly from a crude map Ambrose’s grad student had drawn for her. She paused at the circular clearing that she thought was where they used to make camp, but it seemed smaller than she remembered, and there was no sign of a tent. Granted, the forest claimed everything after a while, even stone pyramids ten stories high, but she still would’ve expected to find a few pieces of rip-stop or scattered equipment. Something, anyway.

  Her pulse bumped, but not with hope. After so many months with no word, it was hard to believe that he could still be alive. No, the skim of nerves came from thinking that instead of a relatively peaceful end in the place he loved, maybe he’d been attacked by human predators, bandits who’d taken his equipment to use what they could, sell what they couldn’t.The possibility had haunted her ever since she’d learned he was missing—a notification that had been delayed months because he hadn’t listed her anywhere as next of kin.

  “Don’t talk yourself into freaking out,” she said, swiping at another incoming bug.

  And really, there was no reason to panic. Even though she’d gone to culinary school rather than following Ambrose’s charted path for her to become a doctor, she’d taken enough bio classes to know that lack of evidence in favor of one hypothesis didn’t prove the opposite. The absence of tent scraps didn’t necessarily mean he’d been murdered by bandits. Maybe he’d just camped somewhere else.

  Still, she sheathed her machete and popped the snap on the midback holster she wore beneath her sweat-soaked tee, and withdrew the .22 chick gun she’d bought at a pawnshop a few miles from the airport. Just in case.

  Walking as quietly as she could, though she’d lost some of her childhood forestcraft in the years since she’d cut ties with her old life, she eased along the narrow path, which was little more than a groove in the soft rain forest floor. Ignoring the screeches of parrots and monkeys far above in the canopy, she strained to hear other, closer sounds. Nerves fisted in her chest, and the skin at her nape prickled, but again, there was no evidence supporting her fear. There was only the fear itself.

  The lush vegetation thinned out as she crested a low rise that might have once been a fortified wall. From that high spot, she caught a glimpse of hewn stone forming a stark grayish white contrast to the surrounding greenery—an entrance leading into the earth. Ambrose’s temple. His obsession.

  Faint anger twisted at the sight—and the memories it brought—but she ignored it as she headed for the temple entrance, reminding herself she was through chasing love, or even affection. Those were things that had to be given freely, or not at all.

  In Ambrose’s case, that would be the latter.

  A slight downhill slope led to the temple entrance, which was a plain, unadorned rectangle of stone: vertical slabs on either side, twice the height of a tall man, topped with a wide, uncarved lintel. The dark, forbidding doorway led into a high mound of green-covered stone that had once been a huge ceremonial pyramid.

  When she reached the entrance, she fished in her pack for the military-grade flashlight that had been another pawnshop find. She’d passed on the night-vision goggles in favor of a decent one-man tent, but thanks to the creepy-crawlies still working their way up and down her spine, she found herself wishing she’d splurged and bought both.

  “Man up. You’re just imagining things,” she muttered, making herself take the first step from soil onto stone. When nothing happened except a ten-degree or so temperature drop, she exhaled a long, slow breath. “See? You can do this.” She might be a decade out of practice, and too ready to believe the prickly heebie-jeebies, but it wasn’t like she had a choice, really. She’d promised long ago never to reveal the temple’s location to anyone else, not even a hint. This had been Ambrose’s spot, the center of his life. And in the end, it had most likely been his death.

  She needed to search the temple, needed to find his camp . . . and his body. The thought sucked, but she could cope, would have to cope. Besides, she’d had a few days to get used to the idea that he was truly gone this time, and eight years of silence before that to buffer the separation. There was grief, yes, and some stale, leftover pain, but overall, her foremost emotion was weary resignation as she squared her shoulders and started hiking inward, intent on finding her father’s remains and bringing them back to the States. Although the ruin and rain forest had been more his home than the apartment he and his non-wife, Pim, had shared near Harvard, he’d always insisted that when he died, he wanted to be cremated and tossed to the wind in New Mexico.

  Sasha didn’t know why. As a child, she’d suspected that was where her mother had been from, or where she was buried. She’d even visited the spot once, but had found nothing but rocks and wind, making her think that the New Mexico thing was just another of Ambrose’s elaborately constructed delusions, one that meant nothing in real terms. Regardless, it had been his request, and Sasha had felt honor-bound to make it happen, even if it meant trekking through the rain forest, slapping at bugs, and fighting the feeling of being watched.

  “Besides,” she muttered, “it’s not like you had anything going on at home. Perfect time for a trip to non-paradise.” She’d just been fired for getting too creative with the head chef’s recipes—again—and she was annoyingly single some six months after a relationship she’d imagined was leading to marriage had turned out to be going nowhere fast. Figuring she was already depressed, and having been unable to get Ambrose out of her head since their brief meeting over the summer, she had tried tracking him down and wound up discovering instead that he’d fallen off the grid.

  Missing, presumed dead.

  Tightening her grip on the .22, she forged onward. The bright white flashlight beam made jarringly modern-looking shadows in the ancient stone tunnel, and the creepy-crawly nerves in her stomach started to grow claws. She’d been inside the temple before, of course, but that was years ago, and she’d been with Ambrose. More, that had been back when she’d still seen him as more than he was—a real-life Indiana Jones who’d let her come along on his adventures because he’d wanted her there, more even than he’d wanted Pim, who’d always stayed behind. Eventually, though, Sasha had realized those “adventures” were more uncomfortable than exciting, and he’d wanted her there not for her company, but because he’d needed a fellow role-player in his delusions, which over the years had gone from bedtime stories of magical princesses to twisted, apocalyptic ravings.

  An echo of anger brushed against her jangling nerves, but she continued along the stone tunnel, skirting the triggered pit trap near the entrance. Beyond the pit trap, the tunnel contin
ued onward to an intersection, where Ambrose had liked to sit and sip the bitter maize-and-chocolate drink she’d made for him from locally bought cacao.

  Sasha was pretty sure that was where her interest in cooking—and chocolate—had started, those hours she’d spent watching the villagers separate the cacao beans from the fleshy pods, then ferment them, roast them, grind them, and finally mix the powder with maize to make the sacred chorote, which combined the two plants that formed the basis of the villagers’ lives and livelihoods. Ambrose had insisted she’d turned to cooking simply out of rebellion. And maybe that had been a part of it, too.

  Still, the smell and taste of chorote coated her senses as she approached the tunnel fork. Her brain was so primed to see a campsite, and maybe a body, that it took her a few seconds to process what she was actually seeing. There was no campsite, no body; there was only a wall of rubble. The hewn slabs that had lined the corridor had fallen inward, mixing with crumbled limestone, gritty dirt, and more rocks.

  The tunnel had caved in, and the damage looked recent.

  She hissed out a breath of dismay as her overactive brain filled with images of her father buried beneath the debris, dying there, crushed and suffering.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. Ambrose.” The name echoed along the corridor and returned to her on a rattle of sound. She ignored both as she rushed to the collapsed spot. Maybe he was close to the edge. Maybe she could get at him somehow. Maybe, some foolishly hopeful part of her said, he’s trapped on the other side with all his camping gear and rations, waiting for someone to dig him out.

  She was so focused on the rubble that she initially missed seeing a strange shadow over to one side, partially shielded behind a larger chunk of stone. Then it caught her eye. She froze, disbelieving, then turned slowly and moved around the larger stone to get a better look. Her heart shuddered to a stop at the sight confronting her, then started pounding again, hard and fast. “No,” she whispered. Then louder, “No!”

  A human skull sat atop a stack of debris that had been carefully formed into the shape of a knee-high pyramid, mimicking the skull piles, the tzomplanti that the more warlike Mesoamerican cultures had used to boast of their victories. At first her mind tried to tell her that the skull atop the pile was ancient, an artifact. But it still wore clinging flesh that ended raggedly where the neck had been severed, along with a long, gray-shot ponytail caught at the nape in a ratty leather thong.

  She knew that ponytail, knew that scrap of leather.Ambrose had been wearing it the last time she’d seen him.

  No, she thought as desperation flared. Oh, no. Please, no. Not like this.

  Gagging on bile and a huge, awful surge of emotion she hadn’t expected to feel, she crossed her arms over her stomach, bent double by the terrible realization that he hadn’t died naturally, doing what he loved. Tzomplanti were only used for enemies and sacrifices, which suggested he’d been murdered. But who had killed him? Why? And where was the rest of him? She didn’t see his body, which somehow made the presentation of his head that much more gruesome. The wrongness of it slammed through her, threatened to take her over. She’d thought she’d been prepared to find him, and maybe she had been, but not like this, never like this. What the hell had happened in the temple?

  She shuddered with grief and an awful, racking guilt. But even through those emotions, the old instincts her father had drummed into her long ago flared to life, warning her that she might not be as safe alone in the backcountry as she’d thought.

  Her pulse picked up, sending adrenaline skimming through her veins. Someone had killed Ambrose, or at the very least, had cut off his head and arranged him on the tzomplanti. That suggested they had been more than bandits. Maybe some of the locals had decided they wanted him out of the temple. But this had been his place for years. What had changed? Had it been politics? Treasure hunters?

  Or was it something connected to the massive fantasy that had structured his life? That possibility seemed horribly likely, given that these were the years he’d believed would bring terrible battles between good and evil.

  Ambrose had always claimed there were others like him, others who believed the world might end in 2012. More, she’d heard the rumblings, seen the documentaries. Modern culture was catching up with Ambrose’s long-held delusions. What if those delusions had somehow spelled his end? What if he’d been killed in an escalating move by people who thought that there was a supernatural war coming, and they were the chosen warriors?

  The idea was abhorrent. And, based on all that she’d seen and heard growing up, it was all too possible.

  “Oh, Da,” she said, using the affectionate nickname she’d dropped years ago, when she’d started to realize that her father might function well enough on a day-to day basis, but he wasn’t all the way sane. “I should’ve had you declared, should’ve put you somewhere you could’ve gotten help.” But she hadn’t been tough enough to take the step when he hadn’t been hurting anyone except her.

  “That wouldn’t have changed the outcome.”

  Gasping at the sound of a stranger’s voice, Sasha lunged to her feet and spun, holding the .22 cross-handed with the flashlight. The white beam illuminated a man wearing jeans, workboots, and a heavy-metal concert tee that made him look like he should’ve been in a rock band road crew, not a Mayan ruin. His hair glinted with ruddy highlights against the flashlit shadows, and he was freaking massive, topping her by a good six inches in height and outweighing her by at least eighty pounds. Too late she realized that they—whoever they were—must have been monitoring the ruin.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, voice shaking. “Don’t you frigging—”

  Something slammed into her from the side, cutting her off midthreat. Sasha twisted as she fell, and caught a quick impression of a woman with long hair and perfect features, incongruously wearing a tiny-waisted suit jacket and flowing pants. Then the flashlight went flying, bounced off the wall, and fell to the floor, where it partially illuminated the scene.

  Fighting in silence, as Ambrose had taught her, dropping into action-reaction mode even as her thoughts spun with a city girl’s panic, Sasha rammed an elbow into the woman’s stomach, yanked her gun up, and fired in the man’s direction. The .22 went off with the wimpy pop typical of the caliber, but the big man spun away, cursing and grabbing at his upper arm. Sasha ducked and went for a foot sweep, but she was out of practice and a split second too late. The woman grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the floor, then did the same with her hand, sending the .22 flinging free.

  The world pinwheeled as rough hands grabbed Sasha from behind, pinned her arms, and lifted her up to her feet and then off them. The man’s booted foot glanced off the flashlight, which spun and wound up pointed at the tzomplanti, lighting Ambrose’s skull with vile menace.

  “Let me go!” Sasha struggled ferociously but her captor didn’t even grunt when she got an elbow back into his injured arm.

  “For fuck’s sake, stick her already,” he snapped at the woman, who had backed off, breathing hard, her eyes glinting with battle rage and glee.

  “No!” Sasha strained against his hold, screaming as the woman withdrew a syringe from her pocket and advanced to inject its contents into Sasha’s upper arm. The burning sting of the needle was followed by cool effervescence, and Sasha’s world went swimmy. Desperation flared as she sagged limply in the big man’s hold.

  No, she cried inwardly. Not like this. Please. She didn’t know who she was talking to—she’d abandoned Ambrose’s gods when she ran away from him. Strangely, though, she thought she heard a whisper of answer, a familiar voice saying, Have faith.

  But faith was something she’d never been big on. Hadn’t ever had a reason to be.

  “Get the light and the gun,” the man ordered. “And take her pack. Make sure we’re not leaving anything of hers behind.”

  “What about the skull?”

  “Leave it. It’ll fuck with the Nightkeepers’ heads if they ever find this
place.” He shifted his grip on Sasha, preparing to sling her over his shoulder. As he did so, the woman snagged the flashlight, and its beam played across the three of them. Sasha moaned when she caught sight of her captor’s inner forearm, where he wore a single tattoo. She didn’t know the meaning of the bloodred quatrefoil, but she sure as shit recognized the tat’s location. It was exactly where the mythical Nightkeepers had been marked with Mayan glyphs representing their bloodlines and magical talents. It was also where Ambrose had worn a huge scar, as though he’d burned away similar marks long ago—or wanted people to think he had.

  Despair howled through her as unconsciousness closed in. She fought the drug, fought the reality of her capture, and the growing fear that she was trapped in some giant, live-action role-playing game based on her father’s bloodthirsty delusions. And, most of all, she fought the sick heartache that came from knowing there was nobody out in the real world who would think to look for her until it was far too late.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Present November 18 Three years and thirty-three days until the end date The Yucatán

  Michael Stone stood atop a midsize Mayan ruin called the watchtower, his dark, shoulder-length hair blowing a little in the sea breeze. Behind him was an expanse of lush, stone-studded greenery; ahead was a white stone cliff that dropped steeply to a gleaming, tourist-dotted strip of coral beach. Beyond that was the vibrant blue-green of the Caribbean.

  It was a hell of a view, that was for sure.

  The ruined port city was called Tulum, which meant “wall” in Spanish and referred to the sturdy stone balustrade that enclosed the city on three sides, with the cliff and ocean forming the fourth. The fortification was impressive, even in ruins, but it hadn’t protected the city from the ravages of the conquistadors and their missionaries. And in the almost five hundred years since Cortés first landed, the place had become a tourist trap, due largely to its small, walkable size and prime beachfront location.