The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “I don’t hear anything, jefe.”

  “If they were alive down there, that would have finished them,” said another.

  There was a pause and at last she heard Jacobs’s voice.

  “It will have to do. Get back to your assignments.”

  She heard the men moving away, but a single shadow lingered, gazing down into their hole. She felt grateful for the gloom.

  At last, Jacobs, too, turned and left. Adam waited another minute, then loosened his hold on her. He turned her around in the water and pulled her to where the light from above shone faintly down onto the quietly rippling surface.

  “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

  “I don’t think so. I—Ow!” she protested as Adam’s fingers probed her arm. She looked down and saw a dark stain marking the spot he touched, near a small tear in her shirt.

  “You’re hit.” His voice was oddly strangled.

  “I barely felt it,” she countered.

  Adam put his fingers into the tear and ripped the fabric wide.

  “What do you think you’re—”

  “Just a graze,” he said, relieved.

  He pulled his shirt off over his head and Ellie forgot to be annoyed. The sight of his bare torso did seem to have that rather inconvenient effect on her.

  The impact lasted long enough to keep her silent as he tore a long strip out of the cloth, which he then wrapped firmly around the wound in her arm.

  “We need to get you to one of the villages or a mission, someplace we can make sure that’s clean.”

  “It’s barely a scratch. And first we’ve got to find a way out of here. Where are we?”

  Adam took a step, then grimaced. He dived down, returning a moment later with something in his hand. It looked very much like a human femur. Ellie thought of the loose, rubbly feel of the floor below them and felt a chill.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Adam dropped the bone back into the water.

  “We’re in a cenote. It’s a sort of natural well. The Maya thought they were sacred, made them centers of ritual activity. So did these people, apparently.”

  Ellie felt a twist in her stomach.

  “Sacrifices?”

  “Try not to think about it.”

  He began to circle the space, running his hands along the stone walls. The well itself was not wide, perhaps twenty feet in diameter. The walls that enclosed it were higher. To Ellie’s eye, the stone sides looked worn and slick.

  “Can we climb out?” she asked doubtfully.

  “No,” Adam admitted.

  She looked around for anything that might suggest an alternative but saw only slippery stone and dark water.

  “Then what do we do?”

  Adam was quiet for a moment.

  “I’ve got a couple of friends in the camp. If they hear what happened and think there’s a chance we might still be alive, they’ll try to find us.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Adam didn’t answer.

  He didn’t have to. The implication hovered around her in the slick, impossibly high walls and the rolling tumble of bones under her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted.

  “It’s not your fault you stepped on a booby trap.”

  “No. Not that. The rest of it. You never would have come here if it weren’t for me. If I’d just…” She halted, her breath catching. “If I’d just been honest with you at the start about Dawson and Jacobs… if I’d trusted you with the whole of the map… You never would have let them catch us. And even if you’d decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, at least you’d be safe now in your room at the Imperial, drinking whiskey and smoking one of those dreadful cigars.”

  Ellie heard her voice break on those last few words, and realized with dawning horror that she was very possibly about to start crying.

  “Do you really think that’s where I’d rather be right now?”

  Adam’s voice was almost disembodied in the darkness, his tone ambiguously dark.

  “At least you’d be alive, and not about to drown in some hole in the ground.”

  There was a particularly mortifying quaver on the word “alive.” Ellie took a deep breath, refusing to dissolve into hysterics.

  “I should have trusted you with all of it. Right from the beginning. I was wrong. And I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.”

  She waited for a reply. And waited.

  There was nothing, only silence and the ominous sloshing of the water. It was worse than his recrimination would have been, worse than the curt dismissal she deserved—that thick, humming, dreadful silence.

  When he finally spoke, his voice came from perilously close by, and Ellie realized that he had moved, coming to stand no more than six inches away, a deeper shadow in the darkness.

  “Say it again.” His voice was a rumbling growl, coming from deep in his chest.

  “I’m sorry?” Ellie offered weakly, his nearness making her painfully unsure of herself.

  “The other part.”

  She swallowed thickly.

  “I was wrong.”

  Warm hands gripped the sides of her face, pulling her closer. The hard, wet planes of his body were only a breath away from her own, radiating heat and solid, barely contained strength.

  “I. Don’t. Care,” he said, grinding out the words with startling ferocity.

  “You don’t care that I lied to you? Bates, I deliberately misled you. I lied about the map, about Jacobs.… I didn’t even tell you my name. How can you possibly say you don’t—”

  The last word was abruptly muffled as Adam pulled her to him and kissed her.

  It was a thoroughly remarkable sensation. First there was the water, the strange buoyancy of it and how easy it made it for their bodies to meld together like pieces of a puzzle. Then there was the heat. Adam’s body radiated it, from the hands running over her back to the whole long, muscular length of him pressed against her.

  And she could not dismiss the potency of her own response. The pressure of his mouth, the taste of him and his raw, animal smell opened something inside her like the floodgates of a dam. She was filled with such a powerful want for an even deeper embrace, more heat, more skin, more of that delicious pressure that built inside her till it threatened to burst her apart.

  “Dear God, that’s lovely,” she exclaimed when he freed her mouth to explore other regions.

  “And about damned time,” he growled against her ear as his teeth pulled at her lobe.

  Something of the implication of his words managed to penetrate through the haze of bliss and desire obscuring her brain.

  “You mean that you’ve been waiting for this?”

  He pulled back and looked down at her. Lightning flickered overhead, and the light danced across his face. He was desperate, earnest, and more than a little lost.

  “You really have no idea, do you?”

  Words deserted her. Something else took their accustomed place: an awareness of feeling. It was deep and powerful, hopeless and ecstatic, and so complete, so unalterable, she wondered how she had ever managed to ignore it for so long.

  “Oh, my,” she said softly, and he embraced her with a new roughness, a fierce passion that she matched now, fueled by the startling epiphany of what she felt for him.

  “This is not at all what I planned,” she protested feebly as she clutched at his shoulders, her legs coming up around his waist.

  “It wasn’t exactly on my agenda, either,” he retorted, his hands gripping at the seat of her trousers and bringing her even closer.

  The explosion of that sensation threatened to overwhelm her reason entirely. But she clung to a last fleeting scrap of it like a drowning sailor as his mouth moved from her neck to her collarbone.

  “Bates,” she groaned, then snapped herself to attention and called more sharply, taking his head in her hands and forcing it back. “Bates! We have to get out of this!”

  “I’m just getting started,” he grumbled in re
ply, and returned his lips to their work at the skin revealed by the loosened buttons of her shirt.

  “No, not this.” She moaned, tangling her fingers in his hair. “The well. We’ve got to… can’t just… Oh, bloody hell…”

  She succumbed, that last fragment of rationality escaping like dandelion fluff on a spring breeze. She gave her mind over to the sheer pleasure of what he was doing to her, and the surrender felt like heaven.

  Then he stopped.

  “No. You’re right.” He pulled back from her. She nearly hauled him in again but mustered restraint as he gently tucked a curl of her cropped hair behind her ear.

  “You’re right,” he repeated. He released his hold on her rear, and Ellie felt herself slide down off of him. “We have to find a way out of this. We can’t bank on Charlie or the others coming to our rescue, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you die in some godforsaken hole in the ground. There will be plenty of time to finish what we’ve started once we’re safe.”

  “Finish?” she echoed weakly, her brain still struggling to catch up.

  “Oh, yeah,” he replied, a dark and hungry note coming into his voice. “We’re going to do a whole hell of a lot of finishing.”

  Adam very carefully set her at the edge of the water, where it was shallow enough to stand.

  “Cenotes are wells,” he said, moving farther out and exploring the space. “Ritual wells. Naturally formed. A depression in the bedrock. Usually limestone. Limestone…”

  Her own focus was beginning to return, now that the immediate distraction of his touch was past. She found herself gazing at the water or, more precisely, at the slow movement of the debris of rotted wood and thatch slowly circling on its surface.

  “Adam, this well has a current,” she announced evenly.

  “Wait here,” he ordered. Then he dived down beneath the surface.

  The water rippled at the place where he had vanished, then stilled. She felt a quickening of panic, the impulse rising to dive after him. Before she could succumb to it, he surfaced, grinning.

  “Caves. Limestone means caves,” he said, eyes bright. “There’s a tunnel.”

  “We’ve got to try it.”

  “Not we,” he countered.

  She felt a rush of indignation. “I’m entirely capable—”

  “Cave diving isn’t like a swim in the pond. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s a quick way to get yourself killed.”

  “And you know what you’re doing?”

  He answered with an eloquent look.

  “I’ll be back.” He took a long, deep breath, then vanished once more beneath the surface.

  Ellie waited—and continued waiting. Fear began to creep in. She held her own breath, testing, then let it out in a rush.

  Too long, she thought.

  She couldn’t lose him. Not after just discovering what he meant to her.

  She would go after him. It didn’t matter what the risks were. She’d dive into that hole, and one way or another would find him. As to what she’d do then… well, she’d figure it out when the time came.

  She took a deep breath, then another, and Adam surfaced in front of her with a splash.

  “Where the devil have you been?”

  “There’s an opening,” he said before she could castigate him any further. “It leads to some sort of cavern. It could be part of a larger system.”

  “A system with an exit?”

  “Possibly,” he cautioned.

  “Well, possibly is better than waiting around here for a rescue that may not be coming.”

  “It’s a long swim. There are a couple of pockets of air along the way. You’ll have to follow my lead. And don’t panic.”

  She stiffened.

  “Have I given you any reason to think I am the type to panic?”

  “You blew up a boat to get me to listen to you,” he replied bluntly.

  “That was not panic,” she protested. “That was a perfectly logical strategy.”

  He didn’t bother to respond.

  “Deep breath. And stay with me.”

  She nodded. They inhaled deeply, then dropped under the water. She followed Adam’s kicking feet down into the deep center of the cenote, then felt it—a gap in the stone, opening into a smooth-sided tunnel. She swam into it, following in Adam’s wake.

  The darkness was impenetrable and long. Her lungs began to ache for air. She forced herself to keep moving. Adam was swimming swiftly. She kicked furiously to keep up. At last, as the urge to inhale grew overwhelming, she felt a hand grab her shoulder and pull her up.

  She broke the surface, and only Adam’s grip on her arm kept her from hitting her head on the low ceiling. There were a mere six inches or so of space between water and rock. But the air tasted fresh, and she drank it gratefully.

  “That was the worst one. Can you keep going?”

  “Well, we can hardly reverse, can we?”

  He grinned at her, then took another breath and dived.

  They passed through two more air pockets, nearer than the first—and she had to wonder about that one. If it hadn’t been there, how would Adam possibly have made it back to her? She would have to talk to him about that, once they were safe.

  At last, the tunnel ended. They broke through the surface of a still lake. The space around her was lost in complete darkness, but Ellie could tell from the echoes of the rippling water that they had emerged in a larger cavern. Following the sound of Adam’s splashing movements, she paddled forward until she felt solid ground beneath her feet. It sloped up, the water growing shallower until they found themselves on dry land.

  It was hardly ideal, but it was still an improvement compared to treading water over a pile of bones.

  Adam pressed a metal box into her hands.

  “What’s this?”

  “My match tin. Open it—carefully. The striker is inside the lid. When I say, light one and look for anything at all that might serve to get a fire going.”

  Ellie fumbled with the box in the dark and got it open. Careful with her wet fingers, she plucked up one of the tiny slivers of wood.

  “Ready.”

  “Do it.”

  The match hissed to life, and a flicker of light illuminated the space, just enough for her to see that the cavern was indeed vast. What lay at its edges was impossible to discern. All too quickly the flame burned down to her fingers, and she dropped it.

  “Light another.”

  Ellie obeyed, and in the light saw Adam holding what looked like a resin-soaked torch.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Are you going to light it or not?” he asked as the second match snuffed itself out on her fingers. Ellie muttered a curse.

  It took a third match for it to catch. The torch flamed to life.

  The basket stood beside them. It was made of woven branches and leather strapping, and inside was a bundle of torches. And beside the basket, something else.

  Ellie bent down for a closer look. It was a small pile of flints, the sort used for starting fires. It was as though someone had put the whole arrangement there for them, anticipating their arrival.

  It looked like they weren’t the first ones to find this cave.

  Adam handed Ellie his torch, then took another from the basket for himself. The combined glow cast a bit more light on their surroundings, and shimmered strangely off the floor of the cave.

  Very strangely, as though the ground itself were moving.

  Ellie took a step forward, then stopped as the flame caught more of the pitch and brightened, revealing what lay before them.

  It wasn’t the ground that was moving. It was a field of glittering black bodies, pouring into the space from every crevice of the walls. Scorpions—large ones, their tails dangerously curved.

  Adam pulled Ellie back into the lake, the water sloshing around their knees as the insects crawled toward them.

  It seemed like black, shining bodies were pouring toward them from every directio
n. But that made no sense. No species of scorpion Adam knew was that aggressive. At best they were indifferent to humans, if not afraid. So why did it look like these were desperate to get to them?

  They reached the edge of the lake and Adam thought furiously.

  Not every species of scorpions was dangerous, but a rare few could be fatal. It was possible he’d recognize the ones swarming toward them if he could give one a closer inspection.

  Then again, maybe not. And the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal for a thorough study.

  What the hell are they attracted to?

  He glanced at the torch in his hand. On a whim, he tossed it onto the shore.

  “What are you doing?” Ellie protested.

  He didn’t answer, watching the insects react. Those nearer to the torch wheeled in their tracks. They charged toward the flame, climbing into it like moths after a lamp. The sheer numbers of black bodies smothered the torch.

  “They’re drawn to the light.”

  “We can’t see where we’re going without the torches,” she countered.

  The river of black creatures surged forward into the dark water, climbing over one another as Adam and Ellie splashed back.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Adam…”

  “I’m thinking.”

  They needed a source of light big enough to attract the bugs, leaving them a way to get out of the chamber.

  He looked to the basket packed with resin-soaked torches.

  He sloshed up to it, yanking out two. He pushed them into Ellie’s free hand.

  “Hang on to these for a minute.” He nodded toward a dark opening in the stone at the far side of the chamber, one from which the insects did not seem to be issuing. “That look like a good option to you?”

  “Option for what?”

  He hefted the bundle of reeds. It was heavier than it looked, but not too weighty for what he had in mind.

  “Give me your light.”

  She handed Adam the burning torch. Her eyes widened as he thrust it, burning end down, into the basket.

  “Are you insane?”

  He picked the whole package up and, twisting his body, heaved it toward the far end of the cavern. It landed in an explosion of sparks that quickly turned to flame. The conflagration grew, fueled by pitch and dry wood, and the river of scorpions turned toward it.