The Bloodgate Warrior

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  Natalie looked up at the picture hanging on the wall at the main entrance of the hotel. “So that woman is like your great-great-great-something-grandmother?”

  Leonor de Alvarado y Xiotenega Tecubalsi, daughter of Pedro de Alvarado and a Tlaxacalan princess, the first mestiza born in Guatemala after the Spanish Conquest.

  “Something like that.”

  “And the…curse. It’s exactly what José told us about the legend today.”

  “He knows the tale, too, and assures me not just my family believes that Técun Úman is supposed to come back. The people just don’t know how.”

  “You know I love you…”

  Nodding, I held my hand up to pause her rational explanations, because I’d already told them to myself. “But none of this makes sense. I know that. How do you explain what happened to me during the accident? I didn’t know any of this before that, yet I saw…” My voice broke as my throat grew tight and painful. I didn’t want to remember.

  Natalie closed her hand over mine. “I know. It would be so much easier to explain as a hallucination brought on by head trauma if you’d learned about this book before the accident.”

  But I didn’t. I didn’t even know Nana was from Guatemala until I’d started asking questions.

  Yet I hadn’t dared asked the most important question. Was this what drove my mother crazy? Had she started seeing weird things, haunted by constant dreams? Had some strange otherworldly bird been screeching outside her window until she committed suicide to escape?

  “That’s why I have to know,” I whispered. “I have to find out the truth. Being here will help.” I stared out over the rolling hills toward Lake Atitlán and felt an unfamiliar ache in my chest. Was it merely the beautiful scenery, or an odd sense of coming home? “This is where it all began.”

  Chapter Two

  August 2012, Cassandra Gonzales.

  Maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty about the dreams if they weren’t so…

  Raw. Uncomfortable. Even violent sometimes.

  He scares me with his intensity, and yet I love every minute of it. Don’t get me wrong, my dream lover can be incredibly tender. The way he cups my face in his big, powerful hands and strokes my cheek with his thumbs makes me melt, but he’s relentless too. He won’t let me pretend or hide or lie about what it is that I’ve come to expect—and want—from him.

  God, it makes my face hot with shame just writing this down. Yet I’m squirming in my chair, too, and hurrying so I can slip between the luxurious hotel sheets and get to him as quickly as possible. Even though once I’m there, in his arms, I’ll fight. I always do.

  It’s like this weird challenge I unknowingly instigated. I’ve never hit a man I’m having sex with. I’ve never scratched and bit, yelled and cursed. I’m angry at him for exposing me like this, stripping away all the niceties and modern veneer to reveal the helpless, quivering ball of need I become.

  It’s all a dream, I know that, but he’s seen a side of me that no one else has. Not even Natalie. What would she think to see me screaming and fighting and running from a man one moment, only to eagerly take him into my body as deep and hard as he’ll go the next?

  He accepts all my struggles effortlessly, enjoying the fight so he can force me to surrender. He wants me whimpering, begging, pleading, held down and helpless before he slides into me. It doesn’t matter what I do, how I struggle—he’ll always be able to defeat me.

  I’m an idiot, right? Why play these sick games in my sleep? It’s not like I’d ever want to surrender to my lover like this in real life. It’s just a dream that I can’t control. A secret fantasy that makes me blush. That’s all.

  God help me if this dream lover actually shows up in the flesh.

  I want to find him. I want to believe that his legend lives on for a reason. But I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I succeed.

  Yet like an idiot, I hope I fall asleep quickly tonight.

  * * *

  His hands clamped on my upper arms, hauling me up out of the water to him. The dream again.

  I fought to wake up. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want him to—

  I flailed and managed to land a glancing blow to his head, but he chuckled deep in his chest, more like purring than any sound a human would make.

  “I’m happy to see you too, Cassie.”

  I jerked and twisted against his grip with all my strength, but he didn’t slacken his hold. He didn’t even try to restrain or evade my blows. Each time he pulled me through the dream, I fought. I tried to fly free of him, but I couldn’t escape. We both knew it, and the ease in which he held me to his chest only infuriated me more. I dug my nails into his shoulders like claws, ripping my way down his meaty biceps.

  His breath hissed out, his eyes slitting dangerously, but he didn’t try to stop me.

  “Don’t call me that. I hate it. It makes me sound like a little girl.”

  The growing darkness in his eyes eased a bit. “Your mother used to call you that.”

  I shuddered, instinctively ducking my head and curling my body tighter into a ball. “Get out of my mind!”

  His lips brushed my temple. “Forgive me, lady, but that is impossible.”

  Tenderness from a massive warrior who could crush me with his smallest finger. That easily, he made me melt against him. He had to have felt the tension leaking out of my body, but he didn’t make any move to further his advantage.

  Disgusted at myself for letting him win so quickly, I turned to questions. Analytics and reason, not insanity, because I had to be insane to think any of this was real.

  “Tell me your name.”

  He laughed softly. “You heard a rousing tale about me this afternoon when you toured your grandmother’s property.”

  I shook my head, but that only made my lips brush his chest…and the rougher scar tissue over his heart. Supposedly where Alvarado’s spear had pierced his chest and killed him. “If you’re really Técun Úman, the Guatemalan national hero, then how can we understand each other? He died in 1524!”

  “Magic.”

  Of course. I forced out a derisive snort. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “Besides, I’m not really Técun. Or rather, he was not the man people thought him to be. He was more. He was legend.”

  “So you’re legend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re not real.”

  He didn’t answer. His heart beat strongly beneath my cheek. He stroked my back, his palms so big and broad I could imagine him ripping his enemies’ heads off with his bare hands. I didn’t want the magic of his hands. I didn’t want to succumb yet again to his seductive dreams that left me sweaty and needy.

  In desperation, I threw out more questions. “Who are you? Really? If you’re not him—”

  “I am him, but more. You won’t believe the truth.”

  I pulled back so I could see his solemn dark eyes. He traced my face with his gaze as though he was carving my image into his memory forever. “Try me.”

  He arched a brow, his lips quirking. He lowered his head toward mine but I shoved him in the chest. “No!”

  He didn’t have to stop—a gnat would have as much impact upon his strength—but he paused immediately at my request. I’d learned very quickly in these dreams that he would always take my refusal seriously, despite the darker edge to his sensuality. He’d enjoyed my initial struggle too much to hide his erection digging into me. I’d fought him, even bloodied his arms, but I hadn’t told him no.

  “You know what I meant. Tell me the truth. I’ve learned things since the first…” Swallowing hard, I averted my gaze. The first dream. The first time I died in his arms, and he brought me back to life.

  I never forgot a single word he told me in our dreams. My body couldn’t forget the weight of his hands, the heat of his body or the force of his strength. I smelled his hair and the spice of his skin even when awake.

  Now that I walked on the soil of his homeland, it felt like the
veil between dreamland and reality had stretched thin. If I could figure out where this so-called gate was, or at least his resting place, I ought to be able to stretch out my hand, call his name and touch him.

  “Some people know me as Kukulkan.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “Great Feathered Serpent. Quetzalcoatl to the people of Teotihuacán. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Lord of the Star of the Dawn, but only when my wrath had poured out upon my enemies. I’m only called forth in times of great darkness, when all my people hold dear wobbles on the edge of a precipice. Beware, lady, and guard yourself well until I’m with you.”

  I made myself look back into his face. Chiseled, proud, strong, larger than life, yes, but very much human. “So you want me to believe you’re a god?”

  “Some have thought me to be a god because they didn’t understand how my kind could come and go through the gates between our worlds. For a thousand years, I often walked your earth as a man, until I died as Técun Úman K’iq’ab, Black Butterfly grandson of K’iq’ab. I haven’t been able to pass through the gates since. They’re locked until the Return at the end of the age.”

  Now I could roll my eyes and laugh, because I really didn’t buy any of his crap. “December 21, 2012, yeah, I’ve heard all about it. The Maya predicted the end of the world thousands of years ago. Sure.”

  “No,” he replied in that calm, solemn way of his that carried so much silent weight and strength that I could almost believe he was a god. “Not the end of your world. The time of our Return to your world. A new age will begin.”

  “With Mayan gods walking around again.”

  He nodded, letting some of his humor return in the sensual curve of his mouth. “Some thought us to be gods. Especially when they were taken to be our lovers.”

  Taken. My stomach muscles fluttered, both with fear and an arousal I couldn’t deny. Some might have thought he’d used those words lightly. I took my date to dinner. I took—chose—a new lover.

  In these nightly visitations, he’d already hinted that he’d take me every way possible, preferably with me kicking and screaming all the way.

  My pulse hammered in my throat, making it difficult to talk, but I needed to change the subject. I needed to keep my mind occupied with something other than the images he used to torment me.

  I pulled my gaze away from him, and it felt like yanking off a mental Band-Aid. “You said the gates were locked until the Return. How am I here?”

  Perched high on a pyramid built as tall as a mountain, I saw the same green I’d come to love in Guatemala in all directions. In the distance, other pyramid mountains reached up toward the sun, but none as high as his. We were so high above the plains that the air felt thin and tasted strange. Or maybe that was just the air in this place. He said he wasn’t from Earth, that he’d walked as a man for a thousand years. If he was a god, then this would be his heaven.

  “The Tlaxacalan princess whom Alvarado loved gave me a very great gift. With the last of her magic, Xicoténcatl tied her bloodline to me so that I could someday avenge her people. Only a woman descended from her could have opened the gate directly to me. Water provides the way, but your blood is the key that unlocked what had not been opened in hundreds of years.”

  I strained to keep my gaze away from him, concentrating on the thick growth below. If I looked at him too long, I’d be lost in his arms. Only a dream. Again. In the morning, I’d wake up aching and deliciously sore, and I’d bawl my eyes out again because he was gone. He was only a figment of my obviously damaged imagination.

  Yet he was telling me things I’d read in the journal. Was that confirmation the journal was right? Or just my subconscious picking up what I read and sticking it into this dream world of my own creation?

  Were there towns? People? I hoped he hadn’t been alone in this place all these years. He’d died over five hundred years ago. My eyes burned. Surely from staring too hard at the endless trees. “I don’t believe. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t make sense. I didn’t know a gate existed between our worlds, let alone how to open it. I didn’t know anything about you.”

  Gently, he trailed his fingers down my arm, a soothing touch that only made me burn hotter. I appreciated his gentleness, but what I really ached for was the domination that swept all refusals and fears from my mind. Then I couldn’t doubt him…because he wouldn’t allow it.

  That was why I fought him each time. I never wanted to face the truth of what I wanted from him.

  I was a successful, driven salesperson. I took time out of my killer schedule for no one but my best friend. It wasn’t even the money I loved, although I had a tidy sum saved for some nebulous future that had nearly drowned in a lake. Certainly no man had ever been able to compete with my desire to be the best. Independent, strong-willed and at the top of my game before the accident, I needed nobody and nothing.

  Except to be taken by this man as hard and as often as he wanted.

  I couldn’t have asked for this kind of dream, because it confused and even repelled me on so many levels. I didn’t want to be controlled or used, let alone abused.

  Yet my body knew exactly what it wanted, and it wanted to be conquered. I wanted to fight and challenge a man with every ounce of my being until I had no choice but to surrender. Until I had nothing left but him. And he knew it, as easily as he knew Mom had been the only one to ever call me Cassie.

  “It doesn’t matter what you know or believe when you can see me with your eyes, touch me with your body, taste me with your mouth. Am I not real, Cassandra Gonzales? Do I not breathe? Didn’t you feel how much I ache to take you again?”

  Taste him with my mouth. My mouth watered at that invitation. My heart pounded so hard my chest hurt. Despite my words and logical arguments, I wanted him. Badly. I ached deep inside, empty and lost, drowning without his arms, his kiss, his body.

  I threw myself against him and pressed my mouth to his. His lips opened, letting me taste him as he’d taunted. So sweet, like rich, warm guava drizzled with honey, yet with a hint of dark-chocolate bite. His hair slipped against my cheek, shiny with tropical oils that smelled divine. Feathers tickled my face and shoulders. He wore many of the turquoise feathers in his hair, but sometimes I swore I could see wings stretching out behind him.

  Quetzal wings.

  His tongue wrapped around mine, dragging me deeper as though he would swallow me whole, and I didn’t care. Not if I could stay with him.

  Fisting my hands in his black hair that gleamed like the obsidian pyramid beneath us, I tore my mouth away. “I don’t want to wake up alone again. I don’t want this if I can’t have you living and breathing in my world.”

  “Then bring me through, Cassandra. Open the gate and call me forth. I will come to you with all haste using every otherworldly power I’m able to retain through the passage.”

  “I don’t know how!”

  I cringed at the shrill desperation in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. I needed him so badly, even if this was only a sad dream created by my desperately lonely heart after nearly dying. The disillusion in the morning would kill me. The doubt. I didn’t want to be crazy, but if it meant I could believe in him…

  The damned quetzal started screeching again. My ears rang with the sound, and his world suddenly wavered, thin and insubstantial. I clutched him desperately, slipping further away, fighting to stay in the dream. Sleek hair slid through my fingers, and I tore brilliant feathers loose in my effort to stay with him.

  “Bring me back to life.” He whispered inside my head, but I couldn’t feel him any longer. I couldn’t smell his tropical scent, but I could still taste him. I’d never be able to eat another guava or passion fruit without remembering, aching for him. “Wake me. Call me to your side. Not even Alvarado himself could keep me from you once the gate is open.”

  I screamed, hoping he could still hear me. “You can call me Cassie!”

  * * *

  I jerked upright in bed, my heart hammering so loudly that it took me a moment to
hear the alarm. I could still taste him. I still ached for him. A dream.

  Furious at the crushing disappointment that made me want to roll over and pull the blankets over my head, I slammed my fist down on the clock. It’d been my idea to get an early start today, so I couldn’t even blame Natalie for dragging me up at such an ungodly hour. Even on vacation I’d drawn up a detailed itinerary that filled every waking moment with scheduled tours and stops. If I wasn’t careful, Nat would probably toss my phone with all its timers and lists into Lake Atitlán just so she could sleep in one morning.

  If I’d had just another half hour of dream time with him, I wouldn’t be so pissed off.

  I slid my hand down into my panties and I was sopping wet. It only took a few strokes of my finger to send me over the edge, and then I did cry, because it wasn’t the same. I wanted him. His body, his big hands holding me down, dragging me where he wanted, his powerful body slamming me into the mattress.

  Throwing the blankets back, I started to get up, but a turquoise feather lay beside me. Over two feet long and slightly curved, it had to be a quetzal feather. If I’d found it on the floor or on top of the bed, I could have tried to reason with myself that it’d surely just fallen into my bed by accident. But under the blankets?

  It hadn’t been there last night when I came to bed. Natalie had laughed at my nightly ritual of throwing back all the blankets and sheets to make sure no creepy-crawlies waited to snuggle with me…until she found a massive cricket humping her leg one night.

  The windows were shut. My door locked. So how had this phantom feather made its way into my bed?

  I stroked the feather through my fingers and held it up to my nose. Closing my eyes, I tried to concentrate, to separate out my insane longing for a dream man from reality. Real quetzals didn’t smell like coconut oil, did they? I’d have to ask Natalie if she smelled anything unusual about the feather.