“Charlie thinks in Maya numbers.” Sam carefully unfolded the next panel. This one was row upon row of glyphs, mostly faces, figures, and place names, the ones she’d spent the most time on at her father’s insistence. “How on earth do you make sense of these?”
“That’s the challenge. Some of them have different meanings, depending on what they’re grouped with. This symbol by itself might mean kin, day. But combine it with this,” she pointed to Ah-Kin, “and it becomes Lord of the Sun, another name for either Itzamna or Kukulkan, the Great Feathered Serpent god.”
“So is this the pantheon?”
“Not exactly. These are place names, many of which did include the patron god of the city. Dad and I believe these correspond to the larger round on the altar and in the temple floor.”
“What are they for?”
“We’re not sure.” She weighed alternatives. Her father had warned her against Venus Star, and so had the jaguar priest. Sam had brought them onto the dig, but how could she not trust him? He’d practically raised her, while her real father had abandoned her. No one knew her better than Sam.
According to the man in her hut, her father was trapped in Xibalba and another man who looked remarkably like an ancient Maya warrior was killing people very close to her. She needed help, and Sam was her best shot, no matter what her father had warned. “I believe this is a location element of the magic. Turn the dial to the city name and open the Gate there. If you pass through this Gate, you end up in the specified city.”
“This is Chich’en Itza,” Sam said excitedly, his blue eyes gleaming with boyish charm.
Although he looked nothing like Geoffrey, he possessed that same easy manner. It would be easy to convince herself that the warmth glowing in Sam’s eyes could be more than fatherly affection. But Geoffrey was gone, Sam was her father’s best friend, and she was alone, again, as always. She had to swallow to ease the ache in her throat.
“So the Sacred Cenote is a Gate, right?”
She nodded. “That’s what we’re guessing. Although many cities are listed that we can’t identify. Many others have no cenote or body of water known at the location. Most of the cities didn’t even co-exist at the same time. El Mirador was abandoned hundreds of years before Tikal or Chich’en Itza, yet all three cities are listed in the codex. None of the glyphs in this column even look familiar. If they’re Gates, where do these go? We have no idea.”
“Now Charlie’s gone,” Sam whispered. “Do you really think he went through a Gate?”
“I don’t know.” She blinked back tears. If the man in her hut was right, Dr. Charles Merritt was worse than dead. “This isn’t something we can blindly experiment with. I still can’t believe he tried to perform the ritual before I finished the translation.”
Sam straightened, his eyes flashing with determination. “You work on the translation tomorrow. As soon as I get back, I’ll take you to the ruin and we’ll put the pieces together.”
“I was attacked on the way to my hut.”
Sam whirled around, his eyes flashing with fury. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” This time. The thought made her stomach drop to a location near her knees and her palms sweat. “It was the same man who killed Geoffrey, and there was a jaguar too. Two intruders, Sam, that shouldn’t be anywhere near this compound if it’s as secure as you say.”
“Make sure a guard escorts you back and forth. I’ll ask Thorne to keep a close watch on you tomorrow.”
The thought of having a stranger tag along with her while she suffered the biggest panic attack of her life didn’t sound appealing at all, but she’d definitely take a muscled goon with a gun on the walk back to her cabana in the dark. “How many guards patrol the fences? Do you have any cameras? Surely they would have caught something.”
“We have the main building and the entry points to the compound highly secure, but we’re remote enough and relatively unknown that we thought this would be secure enough. Ask anyone in Santiago Atitlan what’s up here, and they’ll say tourists. That’s exactly what we want. We don’t want any other research group poking around.”
“Could one of Dad’s competitors have hired him to shut this dig down?”
Sam blew out a big breath and jammed his hat back on his head. “Hell if I know. Venus Star hired some of the best private security around. With Charlie gone, your friend dead, and now the same man around here…I don’t like it, Jaid.” He lowered his voice, glancing about as though he feared someone might overhear him. “Quite frankly, they’d love to steal Charlie’s research right out from beneath him. He’s been obsessed and paranoid lately, and rightly so. Stay close, keep your eyes open, and whatever happens, don’t let anyone near the codex until I’m back tomorrow.”
So far, Sam’s advice made perfect sense, and his worry and doubts confirmed her father’s suspicions. Some of the tangled knots eased in her stomach. “Where are you putting it?”
Reverently, he folded the fragile pages back together and together they set it in a waterproof storage container. Bending down, he pressed his thumb to a control panel on the front of the lectern, and a safe popped open. “Only you, Charlie, and I have access to this safe, and only Madelyn and Efraín have access to enter this room. It should be safe enough here.”
Absently rubbing her knee, she watched him lay the precious book inside and lock the safe. Too bad she couldn’t climb in there and hide from all this craziness. Jaguars who became men. A Maya killer following her from Texas to Guatemala. A priceless codex detailing Gates to other worlds.
The warning was emblazoned in her mind, glowing red like the angry volcano.
The Place of Fright will swallow them.
Hang on, Dad.
CHAPTER TEN
“Your hut’s all clear.” The guard waved her inside, arching a brow at her continued reluctance. “As far as I can tell, nothing’s been inside since you left. Nothing’s disturbed. Your bag is still on the bed.”
No blood? No jaguar-man knocked out cold? “Thanks. I guess I’m jumpy.”
He smirked and sauntered back down the trail. “Welcome to the jungle, ma’am.”
Jerk. She might be the Un-Indiana Jones, but she knew this certainly wasn’t the jungle. Her shirt wasn’t plastered to her back, gnats weren’t crawling into her eyes, nose and mouth, and her stomach wasn’t pitching like a hurricane, which only served to irritate her more. Peeking through the windowpane, she locked the door while she watched the guard head back to his spot at the lamppost. If anything—or anyone—attacked, then at least he’d be close, right? So why didn’t she trust him?
She turned around and slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking. Golden eyes blazed in the shadowed corner, slowly moving away from the wall until Ruin stood in the center of the room. At least this time he was clothed in jeans and a white T-shirt. He almost looked…normal.
Except for those huge golden eyes, the swirling tattoos down his biceps, the scars on his ears, and the sharp angles of his face.
“How did he miss you?”
He arched a brow. “You saw me transform from jaguar to man. Did you think I have no other magic?”
He made no move to threaten her, but she edged backward toward the door. Her heart had lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat. “What do you want?”
“You’re not going to knock me out again, are you?”
Her mouth fell open and she tightened her fingers on the strap of her carryall. His eyes flashed, his lips pulling back in a smile that softened the formidable planes of his face to something much more human than the austere priestly mask. Her fear melted away, only to be replaced by annoyance at being patronized by yet another male. “Don’t push me—I might, Ruin. If you’re so mighty in magic, why were you knocked out cold by the helpless library geek?”
“I was caught unawares.” He bowed slightly but didn’t lower his eyes from hers. “I won’t be so foolish again. However, it’s not my wish to alarm you. We must talk. I need y
ou to understand what’s at stake.”
“So I can help you destroy the codex? Not hardly.”
“Allow me to tell you about the Gate and what happened when your father opened it.”
Ah, he definitely said the magic words. The recording had only hinted at what might have happened to her father, and this man had been there. He might have seen that…thing. That corpse.
He backed away and sat down on the loveseat, trying very hard to appear non-threatening. “Please. I don’t want to kill you.”
Her breath rushed out in the silence, startling her. “And that’s supposed to comfort me?”
“I’ve lived for over a thousand years,” he replied, his voice quiet, his body still. He knew any sudden movement would draw a scream from her throat and thus the return of the guard. “I’ve killed many to protect the secrets of the Gate. Yet I’ve never been as reluctant to do my duty as now. I’ll answer as many of your questions as possible, lady.”
She edged closer and sat in the chair nearest the door. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she could get outside before he killed her; despite his best efforts to ease her fear, she knew he’d be on her before she could even open her mouth. However, if she wanted to know exactly what her father had tried to do, this man was her best bet.
“When your father opened the Gate, he didn’t use the proper protection spells. The Gate was fully open and unwarded, allowing three Lords of Death to escape from Xibalba.”
Something clicked in her mind so loudly that she jumped in her seat. Of course. Dear God, that white thing was a Lord of Death. A demon. He’d said it earlier, but she hadn’t registered that little tidbit. She should have recognized the thing after all the mythology she’d studied over the years.
She knew what these demons could supposedly do, but she’d never once thought they were real, so she’d never made the mental leap to identifying the creature. “Where—” her voice cracked but she continued, “—are they now?”
“One has left the area entirely. I feel him far to the north. The other two remain close.”
“Can’t you go after them?”
He arched a brow at her again, his mouth curved in wry amusement. “I’m honored that you think I could stop a Lord of Xibalba, lady, but I’m bound to remain close to the Gates. They know the boundaries imposed by my curse.”
“If we open the Gate to get my father, will more escape?”
The grim face of the doomed priest slapped back into place. “The Gate must not open again unless I can thrust all three Lords of Death back into Xibalba at the same time. I assure you, lady, that it’s an impossibility.”
She shivered at the flat tone of his voice. “My father—”
“Was a fool to tamper with magic of which he had no understanding.” The arch of his eyebrow asked whether she was as big a fool. He leaned forward, his eyes glowing brighter. “Don’t you understand? Fresh from Xibalba where they’ve been imprisoned an eternity, they were still powerful enough to kill me. I died, lady. Blood Gatherer called every drop of blood from my body.”
Her stomach clutched as tight as a fist, cold and hard and queasy. She’d heard the horrible howls and shrieks of the winds, and then the awful silence. She’d never suspected that the jaguar-man had been slaughtered, not like that.
“Meanwhile, each moment they’re free, they’re killing and gaining power with every drop of blood. I have no magic strong enough to force them back. They’ll spread rot, disease, death, and torture, from sea to sea, people to people, as quickly as possible. I can’t stop them. Yet I must if I’m to save any of our people at all.”
Her teeth ached because of her tightly clenched jaws. What if he was right? What if hundreds, thousands—God help her, millions!—of people died because of her research? Tears burned her eyes, her knee ached, and her head hammered with her heartbeat. Stifling a soft moan, she rubbed her temples, trying to ease the painfully loud thoughts clamoring in her head. Her rational mind objected to demons and Gates and werejaguars, no matter how much evidence her eyes had seen. “I didn’t know he was going to open the Gate. He’s always been obsessed with finding Tulan Zuyua because he believed…”
She raised her gaze to the priest’s face. Staring at him, she felt a sudden wash of doubt and a yawning pit loomed beneath her feet. All her life, she’d believed in her father, even if she hadn’t understood his obsession. What if he was wrong? Ridiculously wrong?
She felt like an utter fool, a scared child who insisted the monsters had merely been a bad dream. Then she could wake up in the morning to her father’s distinguished, craggy face and his scholarly smile demanding she take a look at just one more glyph…
“The Maya did leave through the Gates,” she said in a small voice. The voice of a child, broken, because she knew her father wouldn’t be there in the morning when she awoke. He’d never been there. “Right?”
“Many left, yes. But it’s not like you think. It’ll be easier if I show you.” He stood and held out his hand. “I’ll demonstrate how the controls work.”
Her hands began trembling. She started to stand, but her bad knee simply folded up, refusing to bear her weight. Cheeks burning with shame, she hunched her shoulders and rubbed her knee. Un-Indiana Jones strikes again. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Then we’ll go at dawn. Get some sleep and—”
“No, you don’t understand.” She swallowed hard and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ease the pressure screaming between her eyeballs. “I have a bit of a phobia.”
He stared at her blankly. Why was it so hard to say she was afraid?
“When I was a girl, I had an accident on a dig site. I’ve been unable to enter ruins ever since.”
He tilted his head, his eyes grave as he studied her. “You can read our writing. You know how to use the rings or you wouldn’t have discovered the secrets of the Gates. Yet you have not actually walked any of the Maya cities?”
She shook her head, braced for laughter, condemnation, and incredulity.
Instead, he nodded solemnly. “I see. That is why you made such a grave mistake.”
Pride he understood, even fear, which made it all too easy to see her as a person, a woman, and not someone he should kill to protect the Gate. He already knew too much of her to do it.
He wearied of killing, even to protect something so sacred.
She sat there proud, defiant, and so afraid. Her hands were white, clutched hard around the precious bag she carried. Her chin was up, yes, but her lips trembled, and her eyes brimmed with emotion. “I did not make a mistake.”
He squatted down before her, putting his head on a lower level to ease the strain on her neck. “What you’ve accomplished in this time is truly amazing, but you are most definitely wrong.”
Her shoulders drooped as though he’d said the world would end. Which it might, especially with demons loose. “It is my fault, then. I killed him.”
Startled, he forgot himself enough to touch her. He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and tilted her gaze up to his. Her skin was warm and alive beneath his fingers.
He’d forgotten. In all these years of trying to die, he’d forgotten how good something alive could feel. He took a shuddering breath, stunned at the sensations flooding him. The scent of her filled his nose: burn of magic, a hint of grief’s darkness, and fresh rain. “You killed no one.”
“When I make a mistake, people die.” Her eyes spoke of a lifetime of carrying a great burden. “Geoffrey died to protect me. Now my father will die too.”
“He’s not dead exactly. Rather, he wasn’t dead when he passed through the Gate. But even if he were, death is only a journey, a new beginning to a place where you will follow at your appointed time.” His words meant nothing to her; he could see that by the confusion in her eyes. “You carry guilt needlessly. Let me tell you a tale, a true tale of guilt.
“Once there were two brothers, a king and his priest. They led a great city, very powerful and beautiful, at the heart of
their great civilization. The gods chose to bequeath to the priest knowledge that would be used in a time of darkness to save all people. In his pride, this priest led the other priests of the nation. They ruled with great wisdom and prophesied a magnificent future where all people would benefit from his knowledge.”
He paused a moment, letting the truth twist his mouth and darken his gaze with bitterness. “The priest threw it all away for the sake of his brother, the king. He let his people die. He broke his solemn oath. He let his city disappear beneath the gods’ wrath. He doomed countless thousands to death by disease and persecution when the Spaniards began their conquest. Yet his brother lived, and that was all that mattered to him. Now that brother hates him, the priest has been cursed, and his people are dead. What say you of such a mistake?”
Solemnly, she gazed into his face. He let her see everything: rage, self condemnation, regret and agony. “What did this brother do to cause the priest to break his oath?”
Ruin let out a harsh bark of laughter. “He loved. The brother fell in love with the wrong woman. For love, he was willing to leave his city, people, and brother. He was willing to walk the White Road to be with her. But this brother could not bear to let him go, and so broke every oath and law to bring him back from the jaws of death.”
Her hand closed around his. His eyes flew open at the sensation. He’d forgotten he still cupped her cheek. Now he felt the warm silk of her flesh above and beneath his palm.
“I’m sorry you lost your brother, but I don’t believe your actions caused the destruction of your city.”
Gently, he withdrew his hand and stood. “No? Then you must come to the temple and see for yourself.”
She blanched, recoiling from his words where she had not withdrawn from his touch. “I can’t face the ruins. Not yet. Not at night. Maybe in daylight.”
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