Aztec Gold

by Caridad Piñeiro

  He started with the small bits of energy adrift in the cosmos, fragments left behind by the normal order of things. Slowly he sensed them filling his center, replacing the power he had exhausted during his shape-shifting.

  As he reached out a little further, the energies of the blood sacrifices done centuries before became stronger, almost painful. The spirits of the dead who had remained behind on this plane battered at his body and mind to enter, seeking a physical place to inhabit. Some sought to become corporeal again while others wanted to exact revenge. He wondered if the darkness of these restless spirits was what was necessary to kill Eztli Etalpalli, but realized that by accepting them, he might forever lose himself to their twisted needs.

  He murmured a protest against them, trying to steel his will and close off access to their demanding energies. Suddenly a calming touch entered the field of his aura.

  Opening his eyes, he realized Cyn was seated before him, resting her hands on his shoulders, balancing him. Supporting him.

  “There’s great sadness and pain here,” he said, trying to explain what he was experiencing.

  She nodded and rubbed her hands back and forth along the width of his shoulders. “I could sense it. See it.”

  “See it?”

  “Your aura changed color. It became vivid red, like blood.”

  He brought his hands to rest over hers, deepening his connection with her. It strengthened his resolve against the invasive spirits of the dead. “I was fighting them. Trying to keep them away, but it was difficult until you came.”

  “We are stronger together than we are apart.”

  He caressed her hands, then moved his down the length of her arms until he had mimicked the position of hers, resting lightly at the tops of her shoulders. His thumbs along the fragile lines of her collarbones.

  Seemingly fragile yet he sensed the iron will beneath.

  “We are stronger together than we are apart,” he repeated, and with her gentleness acting as a buffer against the energies of the sullen souls, he finished gathering what he needed and then broke his connection with her.

  “That was weird,” she said and rubbed her arms, as if to ward off a chill. “I felt it…you. Like I had stuck my tongue on a nine-volt battery.”

  He chuckled at her rather apt analogy of the sensation but then grew immediately serious. “We need to investigate the rest of the temple now, before She returns.”

  With a quick dip of her head, she agreed. “Let’s grab our weapons and lights and go.”

  Armed to the teeth and with the illumination of the lantern lighting the tunnel, they slowly proceeded down the hall. Their steps were measured as they held up the lantern and examined the other drawings and inscriptions on the walls, hoping for some additional clues as to how to handle the demon demi-goddess.

  But in this section of the temple, the images and writings on the various walls spoke instead of a great treasure to be found. Some of the tiles depicted various jewels and gold being gathered in a large room—a room already brimming with treasures.

  It was with some excitement that they kept on moving forward, but it was more about their eagerness to find their companions than the promised spoils depicted centuries earlier.

  They soon found themselves running into a dead end, however, and realized the hall had likely been built as a decoy to deceive visitors seeking treasure into the cul-de-sac. The latter seemed confirmed as they heard the harsh grate of bone along stone and a heavy footstep growing ever stronger, vibrating the ground beneath their feet from the approach of the demon.

  With there being no sense in trying to escape, they set the lantern several yards away from them, where it would illuminate the lone stretch of tunnel but allow them to remain in the darkness. Taking up spots close to the last turn, they hid behind the edge of the wall as they waited for Eztli Etalpalli to make her appearance.

  Rafe had a secure grasp on the stock of the rifle and Cyn held her weapon tight as she stood across the way from him. There was no fear in her gaze, just determination. He admired her courage, but the time for admiration was short-lived. A louder thump and quake of the ground ahead of them was followed by an ear-splitting screech that bounced violently along the walls of the tunnel.

  She had arrived.

  With a nod to Cynthia to let her know of his intent, he peered around the corner and down the length of the hall.

  The lantern illuminated where Eztli Etalpalli stood barely thirty feet away, as fearsome-looking as the first night he had seen her and barely escaped with his life. Her almost human head rose more than seven feet above the ground and nearly scraped the high ceiling in the tunnel. Her immense wings were made of a tough, nearly impenetrable hide and bony protrusions as sharp as knives jutted out at the end of each rib of her wings. The skeletal protrusions clattered and clacked against the narrow passage as she took a step down the tunnel.

  Her thick, stout body was clearly female, although covered with scaly green-blue flesh that shimmered from the light of the lantern. The scales slowly gave way at the neck to smoother, nearly human-looking skin although it still had a verdant cast.

  Her humanity, or what remained of it, was most apparent in her face, which contained the normal parts of a mortal countenance: eyes, ears, nose and mouth. That was where any resemblance to a woman ended. Her teeth were dangerously long and multi-rowed like a shark’s. A needle-sharp nose was covered in slime of some kind and the irises of her eyes were slitted and almost catlike in color and appearance. They reflected the light from the lantern eerily, seeming to glow as she looked in his direction and her ears, elongated and elfin-looking, perked up.

  As the demon saw him poking around the corner, she rushed forward.

  The ground shook beneath his feet from the weight of each of her footsteps. The strike of her wings against the stone sounded like a baseball card stuck in the spokes of a bicycle. Sparks flew here and there from the contact of the bony protrusions along the wall.

  Rafe defended himself against her charge, dropping to one knee and opening fire with his weapon.

  Cynthia reinforced him from behind, efficiently working the bolt action on her rifle as she shot time and time again at the monster.

  It wasn’t enough, he realized as their bullets did little to slow Eztli Etalpalli’s advance. The shots bounced ineffectively off her skin and ricocheted against the walls of the tunnel.

  He tossed aside the rifle and yanked his machete from his side. He was about to charge ahead to meet her head on when the demon suddenly leaped into the air.

  Before he could react, she swept him aside with a swipe of her dangerous wings and drove past him, knocking Cyn into the wall with a forceful push of her muscled arms.

  Rafe immediately righted himself and rose, machete in hand.

  Cynthia had fallen to the floor and the monster was nearly on top of her, trying to stomp on Cyn with one of her taloned feet, because this part of the tunnel was too narrow for her to really move her big bulk.

  Rafe raised his machete and jerked it down with all his might, slashing at the demon’s wings. The machete reverberated in his hand from the force of the blow as it encountered the hard rib of bone. He hacked at the demon again and again and one of the skeletal points finally flew off.

  The demon screeched as if in pain, but that didn’t keep her from continuing to try to flatten Cyn, who was rolling from side to side in an effort to avoid Eztli Etalpalli’s dangerous clawed feet.

  Rafe pressed on with his attack, continuing to hack at her wings with brutal swipes of his machete. Piece after bony piece fell away, but they were immediately replaced by others as the demon regenerated her body before his eyes.

  Fear filled his gut as he realized he might be fighting a losing battle. His actions appeared to be nothing more than a nuisance, as he seemed unable to truly wound her.

  Raising the machete ever higher, he put all his weight behind the stroke, bringing it down higher up on the demon’s shoulder with as much force as
he could muster, praying it would be enough to pull the monster off Cyn.

  Cynthia was in a world of pain. The talons on the demon’s feet had grazed her side, igniting fire along her ribs. Her forearms were a bloody mess from fighting off Eztli Etalpalli’s attempts to bite and claw her. The blood was warm against her skin. The metallic smell strong in her nostrils together with the rank smell of decay spewing from the demon.

  She tried to grab for a weapon since she had lost the rifle after the initial blow, not that the rifle had been doing any good.

  As she rolled to her side to avoid yet another vicious kick from the monster, Eztli Etalpalli roared with anger and whirled to face Rafe, who was viciously hacking at her with the machete.

  With the distraction, Cynthia was able to grab the handgun from her holster. Pointing it upward, straight into the belly of the beast, she opened fire, but the bullets just bounced off the thick hide and ricocheted dangerously close to her.

  Cursing beneath her breath, she tossed aside the pistol and reached for the handle of her knife, but the sheath on her belt was empty.

  She must have lost the weapon after the first mind-numbing blow against the wall of the temple. Her hand slipped through the empty space where the knife had been and she encountered the smooth leather handle of the gold obsidian blade.

  As Eztli Etalpalli swept her wing across Rafe, the sharp protrusions tore into his body and the force of the blow tossed him back a few feet. The demon’s position, however, exposed a piece of flesh between her thigh and groin where the scaly skin seemed thinner and almost translucent.

  Cynthia took the risk.

  She grabbed the stone blade and drove upward, her aim true and the blow hard.

  The obsidian blade passed through the skin with little resistance.

  The demon howled in pain and shuffled away from her. As she did so and the knife slipped out of her body, greenish blood spattered from the demon’s wound onto Cynthia’s skin. It burned her flesh, hot and caustic as acid.

  Cynthia crab walked away from the demon, her movements awkward and filled with pain. A strange sound snagged her attention beneath the loud howl of the beast. A gurgling and wheezing noise. It took her a second to realize it was the sound of Rafe’s rough breathing as he lay motionless a few feet away.

  Eztli Etalpalli had clearly injured him badly when she had lashed out at him with her wing.

  Cynthia forced herself to breathe deeply, controlling the fear as the rattle in his chest grew louder with each second that passed. His lungs were filling with blood from his wounds, drowning him.

  The pain of the burn marks on her hand and forearm faded as she realized she had to act quickly in order to save him. She couldn’t let her pain or fear deter her from what she had to do.

  Knife held tightly in her hand, Cynthia lunged forward and jabbed the obsidian dagger at Eztli Etalpalli as the demon stood over Rafe, intending to inflict more damage. The dagger broke skin time and time again, magically slipping through even the demon’s dense hide with little resistance.

  The demon, sensing that victory was no longer so sure, gave one final swipe of the air around her with those dangerous wings, driving Cynthia back, before she turned and retreated down the hallway.

  After Eztli Etalpalli had flown away and disappeared around the corner of the tunnel, Cynthia immediately raced to Rafe’s side. The sounds of his labored breathing became even louder with the din of battle gone.

  “We’ve got to get you back to the village,” she said as she pulled open what remained of his shirt to reveal the complete extent of his injuries.

  Rafe looked down at his side and realized Eztli Etalpalli’s talons had not only raked deep furrows along his ribs, but one of the protrusions must have gone clear through his side, puncturing a lung.

  “No…time,” Rafe said as dark circles began to dance in front of his face. Cold had settled in his gut. He would die here on the floor of the temple, suffocated by the blood filling his lung if he didn’t do something quickly.

  He tried to speak to tell her what to do, but couldn’t. His body was responding to the fluid in his lungs, forcing him to cough and spit up blood.

  Cyn must have understood how close he was to death. She slipped her hand behind his back, picked him up in her arms and held him tight. Rubbing her hand across his hair, she kissed his bloodstained lips and murmured, “Hold on, my love.”

  He nodded weakly and, mustering his flagging strength, somehow managed to whisper against her lips, “Do you trust me?”

  A strange thing to ask with his life in the balance, but Cynthia seemed to sense that it was somehow right. They both knew he was something more than he had been six months earlier. Something that probably scared her as much as she wanted to deny it.

  But as the worried beat of her heart drummed against the fading throb of his, he hoped she still knew that he was her Rafe. That she did not have to fear him.

  “I do,” she said on a ragged breath as she bit back tears.

  He took hold of her hand and eased it over the wound in his side. Closing his eyes, he centered his attention on her strength. On the power of her life beating close to his and called forth her life energy. The buzz of power grew on the surface of her skin and slowly leaked into him as he pulled it from her. It warmed his flesh and hesitantly pushed away the chill that had erupted along his body.

  “Focus, Cyn. Join me,” he urged, knowing he needed yet more of her life to restore his.

  Cynthia fought back her fear for Rafe and did as he asked, imagining that nascent warmth penetrating downward. Visualized bone and flesh coming together, knitting closed.

  She shot a glance at him and witnessed the aura of power limning his body and hers—not two distinct energies, just one combined force.

  We are stronger together than we are apart, she thought.

  As she watched, the air around them danced with the glimmer of light and energy that skipped along the surface of their merged aura before joining with it, making it grow with each tiny addition.

  Centering her thoughts on the wound beneath her hand and the increasing throb of power flowing between their bodies, she concentrated on her breath and allowed it to slowly deepen. Experienced the answering cadence of his inhale and exhale, not as labored as it had been before.

  She envisioned his body reabsorbing the blood that had been choking him to death and the warmth beneath her hand blossomed into intense heat. Healing heat that moved from her and flowed into his side. Returned to wash over the minor injuries on her hand and arm. As the energy eddied and ebbed between them, it was joined by the current drawing strength from the air around them, which continued to fill her body until it vibrated with energy.

  “Rafe,” she said almost fearfully, afraid of the growing charge of power within her and whether she could contain it. The energy swelled within her until it suddenly burst from them like an overinflated balloon, leaving them both shaking in each other’s arms.

  “Cyn?” he asked, almost as if afraid of what she might say.

  “That was…amazing. Scary.”

  As she glanced down at his side, fresh new skin had already sealed the wounds made by the demon’s talons and the burns on her hand and arm.

  Rafe was as pale as when he had shape-shifted and she realized she was also feeling a little drained from the transference of the energy that had saved him. She fell back against the wall of the tunnel but continued holding him in her arms, unwilling to break the physical connection between them.

  Rafe nestled against her but asked, “Are you okay?”

  “A little weak, but okay. And you?”

  “I’m fine thanks to you and this,” he said, picking up the obsidian dagger from the ground beside them.

  He held it up and examined it. The demon’s blood had stained and eaten away at parts of the leather handle, but the blade itself was undamaged. “‘Only darkness as black as her own can deliver the killing strike.’ You were able to hurt her with this dagger.”

/>   She nodded, recalling the ease with which the knife had sunk into the demon’s flesh. The black golden-streaked stone had been more effective than any of their modern weapons.

  When Eztli Etalpalli returned, the darkness Rafe held in his hand would be the key to killing the demon and saving their friends.

  “We need to plan,” she said and took the knife from his hand.

  Chapter Nine

  The thud of Eztli Etalpalli’s footsteps and grate of her winged bones and feet resounded along the narrow corridor, warning that She approached. Unlike before, her steps were slower, seemingly more cautious as she neared.

  Cynthia shot a nervous glance at Rafe and when he nodded, they took their agreed-upon positions in the steam bath. She tucked herself behind an immense overturned stone table and the wall of backpacks they had piled on top of it.

  Rafe sat against one wall out in the open, still wearing the bloodied and torn shirt from Eztli Etalpalli’s earlier attack. He slumped over, his head hanging downward and his eyes closed, hoping to make the demon demi-goddess believe that he was still injured and possibly unconscious.

  Maybe even dead and ready to become her next meal.

  Several feet away from him on the ground sat a gold obsidian dagger—a decoy. Rafe had used some of the fresh energy he had gathered after Cynthia had helped heal him to coat her plain old metal dagger with a veneer of the obsidian from the real blade. The use of his power had drained him and he’d had only a very short time to recharge with the demon likely to return at any moment.

  As before, the spirits of those sacrificed had tried to enter him, but with Cynthia’s touch, Rafe had driven them back. Her body still tingled in parts from joining with him and it scared her to think about what such a bond meant. What his new powers would mean in the long run to their relationship.

  That is if they survived this adventure.

  She had known there might be danger on this expedition, but she had hoped it would not involve risking her life.