The Captive King

by Susan Copperfield

  I held my hands up, stood still, and waited, shivering while a cold wind cut through my thin clothes. Next time I went anywhere, I’d bring a sweater and wear jeans, and I didn’t care who laughed at me. I would never again be unprepared to handle any climate.

  The apparitions flickered before disappearing.

  “What the hell?”

  While the wind whispered through the scraggly pines, there was no answer.

  When I had been a child, I’d grown up where it snowed, although moving to Florida had put an end to the days of building snowmen and sipping hot cocoa. I hadn’t missed the snow much.

  I still remembered what to do, although I’d been better dressed in my previous adventures. Shorts and a thin shirt wouldn’t do much to protect me from the cold, and if I wanted to keep from freezing to death, I needed to keep moving and make a shelter. I could use my earthweaving talent to take care of the shelter part. Building a fire and keeping warm would be the real problem.

  It took a lot of work to make cold, wet wood burn without a flameweaving talent.

  I was done with unexpected trips around the Royal States of America. Or Canada. I supposed I could be in Canada. Canada had an unfair share of crap weather.

  Wherever I was, if I ever met the asshole—or assholes—who’d thought jerking people around with magic was a good idea, I’d pop them in the mouth so hard they shit out their teeth.

  I had no way of being tracked, as I sincerely doubted anyone in Nevada had believed I’d be jerked out of their custody for just looking at their temple. I’d have to rescue myself if I wanted to live to see another day. It was tempting to sit down and give up, but a Cassidy didn’t quit. A Cassidy got up and kept on swinging. No matter how many times life punched me in the gut, I needed to get up.

  That’s how life worked. Sitting down and having a temper tantrum wouldn’t change anything.

  I really wanted to sit down and have a temper tantrum.

  Since freezing to death wasn’t my idea of a good time, I picked a direction and walked, grabbing a stone from the ground and using my talent to sharpen it into a blade. To ensure I didn’t wander in circles, I marked trunks at eye level while watching my tracks. It didn’t matter which direction I went as long as I didn’t go in circles. Eventually, I’d find something.

  Unlike in Nevada, water wouldn’t be a problem. As long as I didn’t freeze, I’d be fine for up to a month. With my earthweaving talent, if I could find seasoned wood and make myself a safe place, I could survive through the entire winter. I wouldn’t like it, but I could make do.

  Assuming a bear didn’t find and eat me. A bear would ruin my day in a hurry.

  Muttering curses every step of the way, I marched. The sun set, and the temperature dropped, but darkness didn’t fall. A pale, golden light rose from the ground, and where it touched, the snow melted and ghost fog wafted over the blanket of pine needles.

  Warmth spread up my feet and held the winter chill at bay, and I halted, flexing my hands to work the stiffness out of my joints. Given the choice of testing my luck and exposing myself to even more Nahua magic or freezing to death, I’d enjoy the heat while I could. If I could find some wood along the path, I’d gather it and some of the steaming pine needles.

  I’d have a fire in no time, and once I dug a nice hole for myself with a chimney, I’d be toasty and ready to wait out the night.

  With a little luck, the medication they’d pumped into me in Nevada would hold long enough for the rashes to finish healing. By morning, I expected to start itching again, but the cold would help. I’d just have to toe the line between frostbitten and itchy.

  I mulled over my options, scowling at the pathway of light stretching before me. Spiritual journeys were something I associated with North American native tribes. The problem with the Nahua and Maya was that they hadn’t written everything down, and unlike North American native tribes, their customs hadn’t survived the ages.

  While there were still Mexicans who spoke Nahuatl and Mayan, none of them adhered to the old ways. The ways of life before the conquistadors were all but dead. Their language was all that remained, and it had evolved with time.

  As for the Ch’olti’, no one knew anything for certain; their people were as extinct as their language, with only a few people like me in the world who attempted to make sense of their writings and revive their culture enough to study.

  I expected the mystery of their odd magic and its revival was tangled with my mangled attempt to speak a language no one had spoken since the fall of the tribes hundreds of years ago.

  Lucky me.

  I sighed and considered my options. The light formed a path, creeping across the ground, waiting for me to follow it. Behind me, the forest was dark and still—and a lot colder. I had no idea what the Nahua, Maya, and Ch’olti’ had been doing where it snowed, but they were damned fortunate they were dead and out of my reach. No, I wouldn’t pop them in the mouth.

  I’d dump them in a vat of powdered cinnabar, leave them for a week, wait until the worst of the mercury poisoning’s hell set in, and rip out their still-beating hearts from their chests before tossing them off their own damned temples to splat to the ground far below.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t a nice person.

  There were some mistakes I wouldn’t make in the future. First, I would learn to tell people no. The next time someone like Sebastian asked for a favor, the answer would be no. Unless it was my job and I was being paid disgusting amounts of money in the form of hazard pay, I wasn’t reading anything for anyone as a favor. After I learned to use the word no, I’d pack my bags and hide under a rock until I died of old age.

  I liked rocks, and rocks liked me. It’d be a good albeit boring life.

  When had my dream turned into such a nightmare?

  I frowned and furrowed my brows. Ghosts weren’t supposed to exist. Teleportation was supposed to be a pipe dream, something no one believed possible. Mercury poisoning reduced its victims to pitiable, broken shells.

  Maybe I was still in a hospital somewhere fighting for my life, and my twisted, strained psyche toyed with me. As a child, I’d wanted to see the world.

  Was I a ghost, lingering instead of moving on? My feet were sore from walking, which made me doubt I was dead. In the hazy light, my skin was still covered in rashes. I didn’t feel dead.

  Dead made a lot more sense than the impossible, however.

  How disappointing.

  The glowing trail led to a place I recognized, and I sucked in a breath at the odd patch of jungle in the middle of a pine-strewn forest. Steam rose from the ground and swirled around the broken ruins.

  One thing had changed from my dream—or hallucination. Whatever. Instead of a shadowy nimbus in the shape of man, someone in a suit knelt before the sacrificial altar, his head bowed and his wrists chained with golden manacles. He remained so still I worried he’d frozen to death.

  Nothing made sense anymore. Why would long-dead ghosts bring anyone to a ruin? The altar was cracked and broken like everything else, although I could still tell its purpose from the old, dark stains marring the pale limestone.

  The little details bothered me. Why would I imagine something so ominous? Every question I came up with cast doubt on everything. I checked my wrists and ankles to discover the obsidian bracelets were still in place.

  I sighed. Unless I died or woke up—or something—I was stuck. What other choice did I have? I couldn’t abandon someone to vengeful ghosts with a tendency to rip the heart from their victim’s chest. The ancient Mesoamerican tribes intrigued me, but not enough to allow someone to be sacrificed.

  Why bring someone else to the ruin, too? What did the damned bracelets and their story of life and love have to do with it?

  I was a disaster on two feet and had the relationship skills of roadkill. I struggled to make friends because I was too in love with my job to spend time with them. When I wasn’t in Mexico digging in the dirt, I was at school trying to convince people I was good eno
ugh to dig in the dirt for a living.

  Few wanted to keep me around after they figured out I had limited skills outside of archaeology and researching dead languages. Or, as the case often was, they had an unhealthy fixation on my tits and ass, which turned me off as much as Landen’s smart commentary turned me on.

  Ugh. Landen.

  I needed to get over him before I went mad.

  I narrowed my eyes. If I was hallucinating—or dead—then I had a damned good idea who was in front of that altar. Who else? There was only one man I had any interest in, so if baiting me into becoming a nice sacrifice was the goal, using Bachelor #103 was a good way to do it.

  Maybe he really was the closest I’d ever get to loving someone, so the spirits of the dead had to work with what they had. Was the five year age difference all that important to them? If they were looking for someone five years older than me to the day I could tolerate, they were setting themselves up for disappointment.

  Wait, no. I was setting myself up for disappointment.

  I didn’t believe in fate.

  Oh, hell. If it was Landen, everything was my fault, no matter how much I wanted to deny it. I’d sold him a marital collar from a culture best known for human sacrifice. I had a quartet of obsidian manacles dedicated to monogamous marriage with a penalty of sacrifice if violated.

  If it turned out ghosts could actually manipulate the material world, we were both in line to have our hearts ripped from our chests. I hadn’t been a virgin before jumping into Landen’s bed, and he hadn’t been, either. The Nahua made other cultures and their penalties for infidelity seem nice in comparison. In times of conflict, warriors of the tribe might be given a captive woman, but there were lines in the sand I hadn’t fully learned, including the fate of children born out of the sanctity of wedlock.

  The bracelets I wore told one story alone: marriage was life and death for them, as sacred as the gods they worshipped. One of the stories I’d learned over the years stood out more than most: Coatlicue’s.

  The mother of the gods, the moon, and the stars, Coatlicue had been found referenced time and time again among the Nahua tribes. A goddess of many names and roles, I’d lost count of her avatars decorating Mexica temples. She birthed life.

  She devoured it, too.

  Of all the Nahua deities, I found her story the most interesting of all. She had been sacrificed by her own children when she’d given birth to Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and war, who had burst from his mother’s womb armed and ready for battle, cutting down his siblings in revenge for his mother’s sacrifice.

  The Nahua had issues with consistency, as Coatlicue’s four hundred or so children hadn’t had any problems with the rest of their siblings. Nowhere in any carving I’d ever read was it mentioned who Coatlicue had been married to.

  Some speculated Huitzilopochtli was his own father.

  Why couldn’t I ever dwell on the more pleasant aspects of Nahua culture? There weren’t many. The four-day ritual of newlyweds doing their best to bring a new child into the world was their most pleasant pursuit, although births were celebrated, as was the first day of the new year.

  I was just tired of sacrifices and tired of sacrificing everything for the sake of my dreams—dreams that grew steadily less appealing. It was difficult to want to keep dreaming when everything circled back to the beginning, much like the calendars wrapped around my wrists and ankles.

  I couldn’t help but feel I’d missed all the good parts in my steadfast resolution to accomplish my goals and dreams.

  Old anger stirred, and everything I hated about my life was represented by the damned altar, one that’d seen so much blood it would forever stain the limestone.

  I hated everything the altar represented, every sacrifice I’d made trying to fulfill my hopes for the future. My time. My effort. My work. My hopes. My accomplishments, given to others because I wasn’t good enough for them, a woman playing in a man’s field. I’d done everything to earn my doctorate and recognition of my hard work so I could continue doing what I loved.

  For what?

  Before I’d come to accept how much I’d been used, Nevada’s offer would’ve been a light from the heavens, every last one of my dreams come true. It was, in many ways, but it felt like an empty victory.

  I hadn’t found the temple, not really. Sebastian and his team had. I had translated the bracelets and learned their purpose, and it’d been my words that’d woken their magic, but the work hadn’t been mine.

  I hadn’t earned Nevada’s offer.

  Sweet serendipity wasn’t as sweet as I’d thought it be. No, it was a bitter brew of failed expectations. I’d been at the right place at the right time.

  I’d only been at the right place at the right time because of irresistible Landen and the jade necklace I never should have sold. I should’ve refused to take part in its sale at all.

  My traitorous heart disagreed. Without the necklace, without the auction, I wouldn’t have met Landen, and my life would’ve remained in the same ruts, where I’d sacrifice everything over and over for a failing dream.

  In the darkness beyond the path’s pale, golden gold, the wavering ghosts of long-dead Nahua warriors shimmered into being, their spears held towards the snowing sky, as though they appealed to the gods that had abandoned them long ago.

  It all circled back to altars and sacrifices, and my fraying temper snapped. With a frustrated scream, I unleashed my talent.

  The limestone exploded in a shower of powder.

  Metalweaving had never been my strength, but I turned my wrath on the golden chains. They, too, evaporated under the brute force of my magic.

  Paybacks were a bitch, and I had head-to-toe cinnabar rashes to take out on the insubstantial asses of the warriors, and I balled my hands into fists. I took a single step, and as though fearing me more than they did their gods and the end of the world they sacrificed humans to prevent, the apparitions faded away.

  The ruins fell into frigid darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  Snow pelted my face, and my teeth chattered. The pain I’d expected earlier lanced deep, stealing my breath. As though aware I’d destroyed a sacred relic of Nahua life, my rashes burned.

  Neither death nor dreams were supposed to hurt. I feared I was dealing with an unpleasant, harsh reality, one where I’d been jerked around by magic that should’ve died hundreds of years ago. I found comfort in one thing: I lived, and I didn’t mean to go out without a fight, although I worried most of the fight had been beaten out of me.

  I was so, so tired.

  Flaring hadn’t helped, nor had extending my talent to gold, a metal I’d avoided manipulating for most of my life. I wasn’t sure why.

  It had been frighteningly easy to pulverize.

  Later, I’d regret destroying the altar, after my temper cooled and I wasn’t still itching to pop a bunch of ghosts in the mouth for making a mess of my life. I had plenty of blame to bear, but the Nahua, Maya, and Ch’olti’ shared an equal lot in the blame game.

  A frustrated scream built in my throat, and I choked it back, gnashing my teeth instead. Screaming wouldn’t help, and it might attract something stupid like a woman-eating bear.

  I didn’t want to have to drop a boulder on a bear. It wasn’t fair to the animal.

  My stomach chose that moment to grumble its complaint over having missed dinner.

  I gulped and stared in the direction of the altar, wondering if Landen had been the one captured by a bunch of ghosts because of me. If so, I doubted I’d be able to live with my guilt.

  Of all the people on Earth, he was the last one I wanted to hurt, and I had my doubts that anyone could emerge unscathed from being kidnapped by the undead—undead who weren’t supposed to exist.

  “Landen?”

  No longer bound, he rose to his feet, a shadow in the darkness. A dim radiance glowed from my bracelets, haloing my wrists and ankles. While most liked a light in the darkness, I feared the answer to my question, spoken
as a name.

  He turned, and my fears were confirmed.

  Landen stood tense before me, all hints of laughter gone from his eyes. His frown turned him into an older, worn man. Every minute we stood staring at each other in the cold darkness with only my bracelets for light, my chest and throat tightened, the reality of his expression sinking in.

  He didn’t trust me, and his scowl deepened, which led me to believe it went beyond distrust to hatred.

  He had reason to distrust and hate me. I’d been the one to sell him the jade necklace.

  “Landen?” I repeated, and my voice broke. Swallowing didn’t help.

  If anything, speaking made the tightening in my throat and chest worse.

  “Summer.” His suspicion carried the sharp edge of anger, and I flinched. “You brought me here.”

  Of course. Ghosts weren’t real. His suspicions made sense. Nothing I said would sound sane. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t force a single word out.

  A cold wind blew, cutting through my clothes, and once the shaking began, I couldn’t make it stop.

  I’d ruined everything. Instead of thanking him, I’d cursed him—cursed us. I’d never believed in curses, not even in Egypt, although the numbers of archaeologists who’d left the kingdom never to return again were staggeringly high.

  Sebastian was a fool for wanting to go to Egypt.

  I’d learned there was substance to their fear—and to Matt’s abandonment of the Los Horcones dig site. I wanted to run, too.

  Deep lines creased Landen’s brow. “Summer?”

  What did he expect of me? I couldn’t deny his accusation, no matter how badly I wished it weren’t the truth. If I hadn’t sold him the necklace, he wouldn’t have been caught up in a mess of ancient magic no one understood. How was I supposed to tell him there was a chance curses were real?

  Yesterday, I hadn’t believed in ghosts or curses. Now, I was ready to believe I’d cursed us both.

  Fuck.

  “N-not intentionally,” I choked out. “I—”