Her body sagged against his and his own knees weakened from the force of their release. With slow measured breaths that matched hers, he finally found the strength to ease from within her, grab her up in his arms and carry her back to the small army cot.
Lying her down on the slick surface of the sleeping bag, he joined her, his body pressed against her petite length. He wrapped his arms around her and entangled his legs with hers, needing that connection of skin to skin. Needing to feel the reassuring beat of her heart strong beside his. Of the warmth of her breath, filled with life and stability, spilling against his skin.
With a long calming breath, he inhaled her scent once again and clearly understood one painful thing at that moment.
Come the morning, Cyn and her team would have to leave.
***
The screams of the villagers dragged Cynthia from sated slumber. She and Rafe had made love more times than she could remember and her body was both sore and tired from the loving.
Despite that, she moved quickly to grab her pants, holster and Rafe’s shirt after the first few cries came from outside the steam bath. She was out the door of the structure in just under a minute, her pistol in hand and Rafe immediately behind her, bare except for the pants he had managed to slip on.
Beyond the walls of the steam bath, a potent and inexplicable presence buffeted her.
“What is that?” she asked, searching the night for an explanation.
Rafe pushed her behind him and back toward the entrance of the steam bath as he looked upward, exploring the night sky. “She is here.”
Eztli Etalpalli.
Cynthia shoved past Rafe to take a spot at his side and tracked his gaze, remembering the descriptions of Izpapalotl and wondering whether Eztli Etalpalli would be like her mother—claws like jaguar’s and knifelike wings.
A few seconds later, something large swooped through the dark sky at the far edge of the village, the loud beat of its wings, click-clacking like maracas at times, echoing through the dim night. The shape was way too large to be a bird, but moving so swiftly that she hadn’t been able to really get a glimpse of it. But she had noticed one thing: whatever it was had been flying over the area where her team was camped.
Rafe had realized the same thing. “She’s going for them.”
The staccato pop of gunfire suddenly joined with the cries of the villagers. A loud, inhuman screech rent the night air and was followed by a woman’s frantic cry.
“Dani,” they said in unison.
Cynthia could no longer just stand there. She raced down the winding path toward their encampment, Rafe at her side. With each step she kept on hoping that no harm had come to her friend. But as they approached the tents, Dani screamed again. Her friend’s entreaty sounded farther away, as did the grating howl that followed the forceful flap of wings stirring the air. Rattling sickeningly in the night sky.
The tent closest to where she had heard Dani had been flattened. The fabric was so badly shredded that it would be unusable. The other tents were in varying states of destruction and at first sight there was no sign of the rest of her team.
She called out their names and a shaggy blond head emerged from one pile as Booth finally crawled out from beneath the fabric of his collapsed tent. The side of his face bore a scrape much like road rash and a purpling spot higher up that would surely turn to a bruise by morning.
Rogers rushed from behind a pile of hay that had been resting against the hand-hewn beams of the corral. Bits of straw and chaff stuck to his clothes, but he seemed all right otherwise.
Finally, Hernandez emerged from the jungle underbrush, clutching one shoulder. Beneath his hand, his arm was red with blood. Along his ribs his shirt was torn and marked with yet more blood. He staggered toward them, clearly unsteady, and Rafe quickly rushed to his side. He wrapped his arm around Hernandez’s waist and helped him in the direction of the tents, settling him on the bale of hay behind which Rogers had hidden.
Tossing aside the rent fabric of her tent, Cynthia quickly located a first-aid kit in the rubble, grabbed a big wad of gauze from it and went to Hernandez. She applied the gauze to the gouges raked into his ribs and instructed Rafe to apply pressure on the makeshift bandage so she could deal with the deeper puncture wound high up on his shoulder, which was bleeding quite heavily.
Rafe did so and Hernandez winced as Cynthia used antiseptic on his shoulder wound. She wadded gauze against the injury and then tightly wrapped a bandage around it, hoping the pressure would be enough to stem the flow of blood.
“She got Dani,” Hernandez confirmed, his voice tinged with pain.
“Eztli Etalpalli?” Rafe asked as he stood beside her as she finished tending to the team leader, turning her attention to his lesser injuries.
Hernandez nodded weakly. “I think that’s what it was. It’s tough to say since it all happened so fast.”
Rafe met her worried gaze and then shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. The demon wouldn’t take anyone unless she’s without—”
“A meal?” Booth said and pointed toward the remains of one tent, where the disarray of the ruined fabric covered something man-sized.
Rafe rushed over and yanked the fabric away to reveal the bloody and partially eaten remains of a man. His shoulders sank with defeat and his body seemed to deflate into itself as he knelt beside the man and bowed his head.
Cynthia joined him, afraid that it would be Rafe’s younger brother, but the half-eaten man lying dead on the ground was unfamiliar to her. “Is he—”
“Jones, our Meso-American specialist. Which leaves her with only David. And now she took Dani. It makes no sense that she would take Dani unless….”
Unless Rafe’s brother was either dead or close to it, she thought.
She laid a hand on Rafe’s shoulder, trying to offer him comfort as he carefully covered the man’s corpse with the torn tent fabric, but he shrugged off her sympathy. Beneath her hand his body vibrated with anger.
“In the morning, once I’ve buried him, I’m going after her.”
He wrapped the man’s body in the tent to safeguard him until morning, rose, and with a quick look that communicated that he would brook no disagreement over his decision, he pointed to what remained of their camp. “You can pack up what you have left and return home as soon as it’s light. In the meantime, all of you grab your sleeping gear and come with me.”
As he had earlier that day, he strode away alone, his long sharp paces quickly eating up the distance between the steam bath and their camp, but Cynthia refused to chase after him. Much like she refused to accept the unilateral plans he had made.
She walked to Hernandez and checked his wounds before they moved. The deep lacerations on his ribs were ragged, but the pressure Rafe had applied earlier had stemmed the flow of blood. The deeper wound on his shoulder was still bleeding. It took a few butterfly bandages to close up the gash and finally control the blood loss. For good measure, she grabbed the tetanus shot from the vaccines in the kit and injected him.
As she finished the first aid, she examined his face and detected the pallor beneath the olive color of his skin. Her team leader was in no condition to go anywhere in the morning. “You’re going to have to take it easy for a few days.”
He shook his head in denial, but then his knees wobbled as he tried to stand and he plopped back down onto the bale of hay. She grasped his good shoulder to keep him upright and he said, “We can’t let Santiago go alone tomorrow. I got these cuts when the sharp bones on her wings whipped past me. It’s the rattle you hear when she’s flying—her exposed skeleton knocking together.”
“I agree that Rafe can’t go alone, Enrique,” she said. She turned to the other two men. “Someone needs to stay with Enrique, but Rafe and I need one of you to go with us in the morning. Which of you will it be?”
Booth and Rogers exchanged guilty looks before shaking their heads, shame in every line of their bodies. Booth spoke first. “It would be suicide to go,
Cynthia. She’s too much for us to handle.”
“We need to get reinforcements. We can call for help,” Rogers added, looking away from her condemning gaze.
Cynthia jammed her hands on her hips and walked right up to them so they had no choice but to face her. “And wait a day or two for the cavalry? The longer we delay, the more likely either Dani or David end up dead.”
Silence followed her statement, making it clear to her that it was a useless battle to get their assistance. Better Dani or David dead than them, they probably thought.
“Pendejos,” Hernandez muttered beneath his breath and stood, but as before, he wavered and Cynthia slipped beneath his arm to steady him.
“Follow me back to Rafe’s. We’ll decide what to do in the morning,” she said, although she had already made her decision.
Hernandez was too physically weak to go whereas the other two were just too weak-willed. She recalled Gardner’s comments about them being all false bravado and realized that their prior exploits had probably never entailed any serious threats to their lives. They weren’t prepared to handle the situation they were facing.
And she was? she wondered. But the answer came quickly.
She had done nothing while her parents were being hacked to death. The ever obedient and quiet child hadn’t uttered a word as she had followed her parents’ instructions and hidden.
As Cynthia had grown older she had asked herself more than once if the outcome would have been different had she left her little hole and gone for help. If she might have made a difference if she had come out of hiding and helped her parents fight off their attackers.
It had taken her years to accept that she could not have changed the outcome of that night.
But this time she would not just sit by and wait. This time she could make a difference.
Chapter Seven
While he waited for Cynthia and her group back at the steam bath, Rafe set up a blanket as a screen to provide him and Cyn some privacy from the other men. He also moved his cot out into the bigger area he had reserved for the men so that Hernandez would have somewhere comfortable to rest and regain his strength after his injuries.
A forage to the nearby livestock area had yielded a few armfuls of sweet-smelling hay that he used together with his sleeping bag to fashion a bed of sorts on the ground for him and Cyn.
When Cyn and her team entered, she helped Hernandez to the cot and silently motioned the other two to take whatever space they could on the floor. Clearly she thought they didn’t deserve better, which made him wonder what they had done to piss her off.
With a glare in his direction, she walked past the screen he had set up, chin tilted upward at a defiant angle.
He spared only a glance at the men settling down for the night, but it was enough to confirm to him what he had already suspected.
Cyn intended to go with him in the morning and none of the other men would be accompanying her.
As he faced his lover, there was no doubt about what she was determined to do, judging from the set lines on her face and the challenge in her posture. Her shoulders were thrown back, head held high the way a bantam rooster might try to fool a larger opponent. Her hands were braced on her hips, legs slightly apart as if ready for action.
He met her gaze directly and in a soft whisper implored, “It’s crazy for you to even think it.”
“She’s got my best friend, but more importantly…I won’t let her take you from me again.”
Of all the arguments she could have made, he hadn’t expected that one. He also knew he couldn’t deny the truth of her statement. Eztli Etalpalli had taken him from her in so many ways. Ways she didn’t really understand and maybe never could. And if she couldn’t come to comprehend who and what he was now…
“I’m not the same man I was before,” he said and to prove it, he held his hands out and called forth the energy floating about the room, directing it to enter his outstretched hands.
The energy danced along his fingertips, eliciting tiny twinkling sparks of lightning.
Cynthia watched the display and shook her head. “You say the nahual breathed his life into you—”
“And made me nahual. It’s part of the reason I’ve stayed here—to learn what I could with this power. To maybe use this gift to free my brother.”
She walked to him, seemingly without fear of what she was seeing. He held one electrified hand up, as if to warn her to stay away, but she took hold of that hand and twined her fingers with his.
With that physical connection, the sparks flew from him and encircled her hand. She jumped as if shocked and murmured a surprised gasp as his energy traveled into her hand.
He released his hold on the energy quickly, breaking the electrical arc between the two of them.
He had expected her to sever the physical connection also, but instead she closed the distance between them and cradled his cheek with her free hand. “Explain to me what this power means to you and how you can use it to free our friends.”
Cynthia had always been his anchor. The one safe haven to return to after one of his many adventures. He had realized over the months of separation how much he had missed her steady and calming presence. When they had fought, she had accused him of never placing her first. In reality, she had always been his bedrock, only he hadn’t been able to understand that.
He understood it now as he reassuring presence slipped from the hand on his cheek into his heart, soothing the troubled turbulent emotions that had been simmering there for so long. Emotions that had jumped to the forefront once again with the demon’s attack and kidnapping earlier that night.
With a nod, he urged her to return to their makeshift bed and lie with him. She did so, fully dressed given the presence of the men on the other side of the temporary screen. That didn’t stop him from slipping his hand beneath the loose fabric of his shirt that she wore and grasping her waist with his hand.
“Talk to me, Rafe.” His name escaped her lips on a sigh as he caressed the skin of her midriff with the pad of his thumb.
“As I lay dying after Eztli Etalpalli attacked, all I could think about was you. About what a fool I’d been on our last night together.”
She ran her thumb across the smooth line of his cheekbone in a soothing gesture. “But you were right in a way. I had let my fear keep me from doing so many things.”
He covered her hand with his and urged it down to his mouth, where he pressed a kiss into her palm. “And now you’re not afraid anymore?”
A sad smile crept onto her lips. “Still afraid, but willing to take the risk so that we can be together.”
“As am I, mi amor. Your words about being first made me angry that night, but I realized the anger was misplaced. I was angry at myself for not being able to explain how important you were to me…are to me.”
Her gaze shimmered with tears of joy and she grasped his hand, brought it to her lips where she kissed it and asked, “So where do we go from here?”
“The power the nahual shared with me lets me gather power from the free-floating energies in the space around us. I can also share those energies with others—”
“So you can heal them like he healed you?” she asked.
“In time I can, but not yet,” he said and continued with his explanation. “I can also take a piece of energy from someone or something else and incorporate it into my physical self. By doing so, I can become whatever allowed me such liberties.” He punctuated each detail with the gradual exploration of her body, moving his hand across the dips and valleys of her body. Moving it ever upward until he cradled the heavy weight of her full breast in his hand and gently kneaded the tip of it, his desire for her overriding anything else at the moment.
“So you can also shape-shift?” she asked, placing her hand on his chest. Rubbing her palm across the nub at the center of his pectoral muscle.
He shrugged. “I’ve done it with the help of the nahual, but my control still needs improvement.”
“And you plan on using this power that you can barely control to go it alone against Eztli Etalpalli?”
“What choice do I have? Besides, you brought weapons—”
“Which are probably useless against a demon demi-goddess,” she reminded and stroked her hand lazily across his chest.
“‘Only darkness as black as her own can deliver the killing strike,’” he repeated, recalling Cyn’s translation of the parchment the calpulli had given him.
“Only darkness and maybe me,” she urged, clearly determined that he would not battle the demon without her.
He stilled the motion of his hand at her breast. “Why you, mi amor?”
“There may be some inscriptions within the temple walls. Something that will clue us as to what we need to do to defeat her. I can read those messages better than anyone else here.”
He thought of the great danger they would face, but as he met her gaze, he once again noted the resolve there as well as the strands of fear woven through her bravado.
He wanted to tell her that they might die. Or worse yet, that they might live as Eztli Etalpalli’s slaves and snacks until She decided to finish them off. But in the depths of Cynthia’s dark eyes, he recognized that she understood that and was still willing to take the risk.
This was a different Cynthia than the one he had left back in New York who had favored safety and security above most things. This Cynthia seemed more indomitable. Stronger. Or maybe she had always been that way beneath her calm center and he had never seen it, too wrapped up in his own sense of strength.
Regardless, he liked the change and he intended to explore the new facets she was revealing.
Bending his head, he kissed her until she was breathless and clinging to him. Until he had touched every part of her that he could, memorizing each precious curve and inch of skin. It was only then, with their bodies vibrating with unfulfilled need, that he tucked her close.
Aztec Gold Page 7
