I couldn’t let my guard down and trust anyone again, now that I knew the truth and what it’d cost me.
“It’d be easier to trust you if I knew just what the hell was going on.”
“I told you,” Dante said with an easy smile. “You can talk to goddesses.”
“Allegedly.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. He offered it to me from between two fingers. I took it with a sour look.
“What’s this?”
“Just open it so we can get on with the day.”
Birds chirped in the sunny jungle. The Boundless Jungle almost looked inviting. But it was a wilderness which even Aldric’s men avoided—just the place for an explorer looking to hide a stash might go.
I unfolded the paper. It was enchanted, but not in the same way as the message from before. This one was animated, with scrollable text. An old-school kind of iPad, perhaps. The text floated a little over the sheet, along with the image.
It was my file.
The FBI’s file on me, more specifically—everything they had. Which was a lot more than I’d anticipated. It was marked FOR EYES ONLY and stamped with the highest level of clearance. Didn’t know I was that interesting.
“Why do you think the FBI came here?” Dante said.
“Aldric.”
“Wrong. You.”
I would have been flattered, but instead I couldn’t breathe. Words popped out: skilled con woman. Pathological liar. Believes herself Robin Hood. Revived from the dead.
An image flashed by—the same crime scene photo that Rayna had shown me at the Loaded Gun. My body, lifeless and bloodied, lying in that Bourbon Street back alley.
I swiped past, and more words flooded through. Reaper. Rumored to work for the local warlord. Lives alone. Highly effective. And then the last one: is the only one the gods have answered.
My fingers were shaking, and I dropped the paper. It’s difficult to explain why word of Lucille’s identity and presence on Earth would be so bad. Everyone would rejoice, right—we weren’t alone. Wrong. All the people who had their beliefs threatened would melt down. The pitchforks—or, more likely, the nukes—would come out. Civilization’s illusory calm would break apart. And then we’d all be living underground, eating canned tuna until the end of days.
There was that other part, too. Remember what they did to Joan of Arc? Not that I was comparing myself—although according to the FBI’s psycho-forensics, I had delusions of being Robin Hood—just saying. She started hearing voices, everyone rallied behind her, then they all decided she needed to get the fuck out. One large burning pyre later, and she was ash and bone.
No thanks.
The spell disappeared from the paper, rendering it blank. I tried to breathe in and out, but it was a slow, hitchy affair.
Dante leaned back into the car and said, “There you go.”
“Rayna’s working with you,” I said. It was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe not the most pressing, but one of the many unanswered loose ends twirling around my neck look a noose.
“You always need good intel.” Dante gave me a wink. “Lighten up. She was doing you a favor.”
“By blackmailing me?”
“It was fake blackmail. Just to give you incentive to come find us.”
“You could’ve just told me.”
“You know better than anyone else, Eden Hunter, that a mark must come in on their own.”
So it had been a con. Fantastic. Dante was acting like it was all for the greater good—as if finding Francis Drake’s treasure stash was part of that. But I was here, and part of it all, now, so it made no sense to dig my heels in and pout.
I stepped into the gravel lot. Someone had tried to make this a tourist attraction or a park at some point, but the signs were all faded. Some tracts of wilderness refuse to be tamed. Outside the overgrown trappings of civilization, there was nothing around but trees and tropical flora.
Wildlife chattered in the background of the remote forest. A crisp waterfall crackled over rocks, hidden somewhere within the vast foliage. It all seemed to rise to a crescendo as I took everything in.
As places to die went, I guess it wouldn’t be bad.
Dante headed to the trunk and slid in the key. He tossed a shovel on the ground, followed by a rope. My heart beat a little faster. As dates went, I’d been on way worse. Not that this was a romantic picnic by any stretch.
“Almost done,” the treasure hunter said. A revolver tumbled to the ground next to the other supplies. The murder kit was capped off by a couple large bottles of water. Dante emerged from beneath the trunk’s canopy and glanced between the pile and me. “Looks suspicious, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said with a fake smile. The paranoia was returning. This was what living alone in the jungle by yourself for too long did. When a little stress came along, you cracked and couldn’t be reassembled.
Keep it together, Eden. Keep it together.
“I think you’ll keep it together. It’s just up the hill.”
Nice. I was talking out loud again.
“What’s with all this?”
Dante leaned against the car and adjusted his jeans. “I’ve killed people before, Eden, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I obviously know that.”
“Different times, different rules.” His face darkened. “Doesn’t make it right. Just makes it reality.”
“Just tell me what you need from me.”
“I assure you, Eden Hunter, it will all become clear.” Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. Without explanation, he flicked it through the air, toward me.
It was old, tarnished by rough life, wearing its story in pock marks and grime. Unlike a modern coin, its edges were misshapen and uneven, without the little ridges one takes for granted. This made it surprisingly smooth, despite its not quite-circular shape. The figure gracing the front had been faded by the sands of time. It thrummed with a potent magical energy that I could feel, but couldn’t identify.
“What is this?” I held the gold up to the light. The sun coming through the trees shone off it so brightly that I had to squint.
“Just a slice of Sir Francis Drake’s treasure.”
Although I didn’t know what type of magic the coin contained, I could sense its power. The centuries-old obsession with Drake’s fortune made a lot more sense, now. Maybe I should’ve read into the legends a little bit closer.
Dante stooped down to gather the supplies when he froze. Not in the way you do when you hear a sudden noise—the freezing where your body shakes, and your breathing slows. No—he actually just stopped in place, as if someone had pressed the pause button on his life.
I dropped behind the sports car and held my breath, listening to the sounds of the jungle.
“E-Eden.” Dante’s voice sounded like he was forcing it out by sheer will. “The—the coin.”
I looked at the small piece of treasure, unsure how it would help. Then I heard another voice—one that was very familiar, but I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“Hello, Cross. We finally meet again.”
Lucille.
I scrambled along the ground to the trunk, where Dante was half hunched over. His eyes slowly turned to me. I placed the coin in his open palm, and he tumbled to the ground like a sculpture.
“What’s in those coins?” I asked in a hushed voice. “And how did Lucille find us?”
“Tell you later,” he said, reaching for the revolver before joining me behind the car. “She’s very good at what she does.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“You want an explanation, or do you want to live?” Dante looked through the open passenger side door. A wind spell buffeted the side of the expensive car, and he ducked down. “After five hundred years, you’d think she’d let it go.”
“Let what go?”
“I might’ve broken a promise to her.” Dante looked scared. Not a
good sign. Then he got up and sprinted into the jungle.
And I had no choice but to follow.
21
Ah yes, precisely how I had envisioned my Friday: being caught up in a five-hundred year old feud. It didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, considering I was in the same boat. I’d also broken a promise to Lucille, and if the shaking forest around us and dark sky was any indication, she was what you might call volatile. There was no escaping her wrath. Period.
No matter. Being discovered was no longer the immediate concern.
Mere survival was. Unfortunately, she’d brought along her DSA lackeys, and perhaps a few more creatures, too, in her effort to snare Dante.
An animated tree root snaked at my legs as I sprinted up the scenic path. I leapt over it, narrowly missing its tentacle-like grasp. A bird swooped down from the dense canopy, attempting to dive bomb us, but Dante blew it out of the air with a well-timed revolver shot.
Instead of blood, it disintegrated into a puff of black ash that sprinkled upon us like rain as we fled higher up the hilly terrain. I wasn’t the navigator, but it seemed like going for high ground wasn’t the right call. Then again, the rest of the Boundless Jungle stretched into the water. Lucille was the goddess of rain, which meant she could summon a storm to drown us.
Thunder and lightning crackled around us as we sprinted for the top. The waterfall’s roar grew into a fantastic, pounding splendor that would have been welcome, had it not been for the additional problem it presented. There was no way across. I could see glimpses of the chasm through the gaps in the trees. Water churned and roiled in the space below.
“Duck!” Dante pushed down my head down and fired another shot. An inhuman howl of erupted behind us. With all the adrenaline, and the mélange of creatures trying to kill us, it was difficult to sense its soul. I felt the Reaper’s Switch thrum and vibrate in my pocket, which it only did when powerful beings were around.
That had happened only once before: when I had met Lucille four years ago. I hadn’t seen her since, but I knew she was watching in the shadows from time-to-time. According to the FBI, Aldric, and just about everyone else, I was interesting. No wonder a goddess had answered my call.
I sprinted ahead of Dante, spurred on by cold fear. If she found me out, I was dead. But that wasn’t the bigger problem: it was what she’d done for me. That would disappear into thin air once she discovered I was working with Dante. She wouldn’t even need to know that I’d broken our pact. The entire forest hummed with a dark energy as we emerged at the incline top’s. Calling it a mountain would have been generous, but the vantage point offered us a good view of the surrounding area. To the east, the Boundless Jungle stretched into the ocean for miles, the trees seemingly floating in the water. To the south, beyond the forest was nothing but aquamarine water. We were at the end of the island, and seemingly the world.
In the immediate area were a rocky plateau and the steep waterfall. No conveniently placed rope bridges. This was not a place for tourists, or where one found themselves by accident. Precisely why Drake had picked it as his hiding spot.
I went up to the plateau’s edge and stared into the roiling water below. We had to be two or three hundred feet up. No movie-esque leaps into the churning falls to save ourselves. A rumbling growl shook the forest and the sky turned a darker shade of gray.
Lucille’s voice rode on the wind. “I will collect what I am owed, Cross.”
“I don’t think she likes you very much,” I said, trying to sound chipper in the face of certain death. When I turned around, however, to see how Dante was taking things, I found that he was absent. As in, disappeared.
My heart promptly tried to escape through my throat. In a panic, I rushed back toward the forest, only to meet a shadowy creature emerging from the densely packed trees. As it came into the light, I recognized it: a gorgon, snakes wriggling within her demonic hair.
The DSA would hire just about anyone, apparently.
The beast roared, trying to fix its stony gaze on me. Fortunately, it was a glacially slow creature, otherwise I’d have been toast. I darted back to the rocky plateau where I was trapped with nowhere to go. Now in full-blown shit-my-pants crisis mode, my first instinct was to sprint right into the waterfall. Better than being a lawn statue for the rest of my life.
The gorgon brayed behind me as I crept toward the edge once more. The sound of the churning sea washed over me, becoming part of my very being. It seemed to call to me.
“Eden. Eden.”
“I’m ready,” I said to the crashing water.
“Jump, goddamnit.”
It wasn’t the waterfall. That was Dante.
My eyes flashed open, and I saw his fingers waving out from the plunging water.
I didn’t ask how. Today wasn’t the day for that.
I just jumped, enveloped by the powerful water as the forest behind me screamed. I hit the slick ground and almost pitched face first into the rock. Dante’s strong forearm prevented me from going further. I wanted to collapse against him, but my pride and annoyance both demanded that I push away immediately. As I caught my breath, I peered into the cascading water.
“Did the creatures see you, Eden?”
“I didn’t see them reach the plateau.”
“That doesn’t mean they didn’t see you.”
“Let’s assume they did,” I said. “Then what?”
“Then we need to hurry.” Dante scratched his head and narrowed his eyes, like he was calculating the best route forward. The revolver was tucked into his pants, its shiny finish coated by a fine mist. As for me, I was intact—although my jeans and low tops were soaked through.
He opened his hand, revealing a thin trickle of blood. The coin had made an indent in his flesh from where he had gripped it so hard. For whatever reason, he’d clung to it the entire chase.
But that wasn’t what concerned me.
“Why’s it glowing?” And I didn’t mean the coin. An amber glow emanated through his fingers, snaking up to his wrist before dying out. If our would-be killers in the forest had me concerned, this was on a whole different level.
“Incredible,” Dante said, closing his fist and holding it up to his face in fascination.
“That’s a matter of opinion.” I watched as the light pulsed, casting a glow across the wall. There was an etching on the wet rock—unmistakably human. A treasure hunter’s mark that was as clear a sign as any that Drake had been here long ago. Dante leaned in to examine the marking, but the light suddenly went out, plunging us into relative darkness.
“Seems you have the magic touch,” I said. “Congratulations.”
Above the din of the waterfall came a cascade of shouts and roars. Lucille’s minions—nor, presumably, the goddess herself—had given up her pursuit. It would be only a matter of time before they either found our hiding spot, or spread out in the jungle to surprise us when we emerged from hiding.
Dante snapped out of his awestruck state like a bell had rang next to his ear. “Come with me.”
His hand locked firmly around mine. I accepted his lead without question or snark, and we descended into the wet cave, wending our way through the narrow passages. Given the shadowy dimness, it was difficult to tell whether the passageway had been cut right into the cliff face, or it was a natural formation. Either way, it made for a perfect hiding spot.
“What do you owe her, exactly?” I asked.
“You aren’t the only one who can talk to gods, Eden.”
“And here I thought I was special.”
“But Lucille isn’t quite the god we both had in mind.” Dante pulled me a little harder around one corner. I was about to protest, but then I felt the whoosh of nothingness at my side, and realized that he’d guided me away from a black abyss. “She’s more of a…devil.”
“Like make a deal with the devil?” I pressed a little tighter against him, despite my ego’s reservations. Pride could wait until after survival. His shoulders were taut, and his skin was
cold from the churning falls. He didn’t acknowledge the shift in our arrangement, just kept pressing on.
“That would be the one. And fail her trials at your own peril.” I imagined him grinning with that devil-may-care cool in the darkness.
“What was your deal?”
“Can’t tell you all my secrets,” Dante said, his voice hinting at all the scary things his words left unsaid. “I need a few for myself.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Well, I know all yours.”
Right. The FBI file. Here I’d been so concerned about my secrets getting out, and they’d been lurking on some government mainframe for who knew how long. All things considered, that wasn’t the worst place to keep a secret, though. Hopefully my file was kept in the same iron-clad vault where they kept the Kennedy files and all their stuff on UFOs.
“Probably not all of them,” I said, with a slight edge.
“Naughty girl.” Cocky bastard. Five hundred years was plenty of time to cultivate a winning personality—or at least the outer appearance of one. “Stop here.”
I rammed into his back, feeling his chest rise with mine in the darkness. It was so silent that I could hear the water droplets trickle off my hair onto the stone. I felt him raise his arm slowly, so as not to hit me. Then Dante snapped his fingers twice. A ring of lights instantly sprung on before us, illuminating a narrow walkway spanning a long chasm. On the other side, a room literally glittered.
“I hope you’re not afraid of heights, Eden.”
“Just don’t fall, jackass. I don’t have directions out of this place.”
He laughed, and I followed him over, to the fortune lurking on the other side. Not falling to my death was a plus, although heights had never bothered me. The magical lanterns above the walkway snuffed themselves out as soon as we entered the treasure room. Drake’s secret stash filled the large grotto. The room had to be at least twenty feet square—well, as square as a cave could get—and it was covered in treasure. It was like the archives of the most unbelievable museum on Earth. Glowing vases and glittering spoils were stacked to the rocky ceiling.
Rain Dance (Sunshine & Scythes Book 1) Page 17
