Nightshine: A Novel of the Kyndred (23 page)

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Authors: Lynn Viehl

Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fiction

BOOK: Nightshine: A Novel of the Kyndred
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Chapter 12
 
September 29, 1978
Mexico City, Mexico
 
“Y
ou’re sure what you saw was gold,” Foster Stanton said as he hunched over to follow Chavez into the narrow shaft. “You could be wrong, you know. It might be copper, or pyrite inlay, or some sort of resin—”
“Not this,” the electrician promised. “I know the difference.”
Stanton knew he was betting his professional reputation—not to mention his personal liberty—on the word of an almost illiterate utility worker. But since Chavez had been a member of the original work crew that had accidentally unearthed an eight-ton stone disk carved with the relief of an ancient Aztec goddess, the archaeologist had no choice. No one from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History allowed anyone but their own people to work the site, and their lack of funding and equipment had brought the dig practically to a standstill.
Fortunately the electricians who had been rerouting the city’s power conduits were still permitted access, and Chavez had vouched for Stanton. Removing the artifact would be much more difficult, but first Stanton had to determine whether the find was even worth his trouble.
The electrician stopped, tucking his flashlight under his chin as he grabbed a panel of particleboard and moved it aside.
“Through here, señor,” Chavez said, holding up his flashlight to illuminate the low entrance he had uncovered.
Stanton saw the crumbling condition of the mud-covered walls and hesitated. “Has anyone been in here to reinforce the ceilings?” An odor wafted out and he almost choked. “What is that smell?”
“That’s from the old sewer pipe. The ceiling will hold.” Chavez gave him a disgusted look. “What are you, afraid? You want a priest to bless the place first?”
Stanton held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he bent over and ducked into the small chamber. The air inside smelled of decay, not human waste, but he forgot about the bile rising in his throat as soon as Chavez trained his light on the partially dug pit in the floor, and what gleamed through the disturbed earth. “My God.”
The statue appeared to be a life-size sculpture of a Mesoamerican nobleman. Stanton fell to his knees, bruising them on the shells surrounding the edge of the pit, and reached in with a trembling hand to brush away more soil. He uncovered the leg of the statue from knee to hip, where he discovered the jagged edges of the top of the limb where it had separated from the torso.
He jerked up his head to glare at Chavez. “Did you hack off the leg?”
“No, señor. I found it just as you see.” The electrician winced and rubbed the back of his neck. “It is too heavy for the two of us to carry out. We will need more men.”
“Solid gold.” Stanton felt exactly what Carter must have the first time he laid eyes on the riches contained in Tutankhamen’s tomb. “It’s impossible.” He laughed as he started digging around the leg with his hands. “It’s miraculous.”
“We must go now.” Chavez slapped a hand against his arm. “There are too many bugs down here. I can feel them biting me.”
The archaeologist barely heard him as he finished uncovering the entire limb. Unlike other burial tributes, this one was incredibly lifelike, as if it had been cast directly from a living human leg. “You go up. I have to see more of it.”
Carefully he stepped down into the pit and straddled the lower portion of the statue in order to uncover the head. Like the leg it had been raggedly detached from the torso, and the sculptor had not bothered to adorn it with precious gems or intricate inlay, but the spectacularly rendered features and minute detailing—even the closed eyelids had two rows of tiny, curling lashes—were breathtaking.
“Señor.” The electrician yelped and dropped the flashlight. “Something is wrong. Something is—” His voice dissolved into a cry as he stumbled into one of the walls, and dirt rained down atop Stanton and the pit.
“Hold still, you idiot, before you bring the whole place down on our heads. Here, take this.” He grabbed the flashlight and aimed the beam at the sound of Chavez’s whining.
The beam illuminated bloody hands pressed over the electrician’s face. When he dropped them, Stanton saw dozens of deep cuts crisscrossing the man’s features, as if someone had slashed him repeatedly in the face. As more wounds appeared, as if his flesh were being cut from the inside, his eyes rolled back and he toppled over next to the pit.
Stanton pushed himself up, in the process dislodging a huge, round shell on the edge of the pit. The shell rolled in atop the statue, and when he turned the flashlight caught the three black holes bored in it and the two rows of teeth gleaming through a fringe of black.
Shells don’t have teeth,
Stanton thought.
Or mustaches.
Stanton jerked back and his hand landed in something wet. He looked down to see a stream of blood flowing over his fingers, and followed it up to the electrician’s body. More poured from the wide gap in his throat and ran over the edge of the pit. When he looked back down he saw he was kneeling in a crimson pool.
Soil shifted, revealing more gold.
Pain sliced across Stanton’s forehead as he scrambled backward, trying to crawl out of the pit. The warm wetness that ran into his eyes blinded him, but he kept pis-toning his legs and arms, splashing in the blood that now ran down his chest and forearms and thighs, until he slipped and fell backward, slamming his head against a column of stone.
He brought up his numb hands, wiping his eyes clear so he could see what was happening to him. He couldn’t be dying, not like this. Not in a dirt pit with more ancient gold than he’d ever seen. No one would ever know that he’d been the one to discover it.
“Help me,” he pleaded, reaching up toward the shadow hovering over him.
“Ayúdame, por favor.”
“Cämpa tihuällah? Tlein nonacayo?”
a voice thundered in his ears.
“Mä niquitta.”
Where have you come from? What is my body? Let me see it.
Stanton’s killer spoke as if he were the ancient Cë-Acatl. Dredging up the proper response, he said in stilted Nahautl,
“Nimitznottitïlïco in monacayo, To-piltzin.” I have come to show you your body, Our Beloved Lord.
“Cämpa tihuällah?” Where have you come from?
“Ömpa nihuïtz in Nonohualcatepëtl ïtzintlan,”
Stanton lied.
I have come from the foot of the mountain Nonoalcatepëtl. “Ca nimomäcëhual.” I am your subject.
Chapter 13
 
“I
don’t think your father likes me,” Drew said as he cast off the last line tying the battered old fishing boat to the dock before waving to the elderly Mexican watching from the end of the pier. The old man didn’t wave back. “Is it because I’m American?”
“No.” Gracie used a frayed pull cord to start an outboard motor that was only slightly less ancient than the boat.
He joined her and ran a hand over his scalp. “Is red hair considered unlucky?”
“If red were an unlucky color, we would not have it on our national flag.” She moved to the helm and steered the boat away from the dock.
As they moved out into the bay, Drew looked out over the bow, but all he saw was endless ocean. “How long will it take us to reach this Englishman’s island?”
“A few hours.” She nodded to the cramped recess leading belowdecks. “My father has a bunk down there. You should go and sleep while you can.”
“And leave you to sail through stormy seas by yourself?” He grinned. “Not a chance, sweetheart.”
She adjusted the controls before she turned to him. “The sea is calm, you are exhausted, and I am not your sweetheart.”
“You didn’t sleep last night, either,” he reminded her, but his smile faded as he saw the whiteness of her knuckles as she gripped the wheel. “You don’t have to do this, Gracie, not if it’s going to cause trouble with your family. We can turn it around right now and go back. I’ll hire one of the other fishermen to do this.”
“No one will take you near the islands. They know the law. If we’re stopped, I can use my credentials.” She checked the navigational equipment before sitting down in the captain’s chair. “
Papi
is not angry at you. It’s me.” She sighed. “It’s always me.”
“I noticed he didn’t exactly break out the champagne when we showed up.” Drew sat down beside her. “Is it because you left home?”
“My family never approved of my going to school and getting a job in the city,” she admitted. “They wanted me to marry.
Papi
even had a husband picked out for me.”
Longing and jealousy ricocheted inside him, two pin-balls covered with spikes. “Was this husband-to-be a fat, ugly old widower with six kids?”
“Eduardo? He was young, slim, and handsome. No children, but no desire for an educated, working wife.” She sounded depressed, but when she looked at him her eyes twinkled. “Now he is older and a little fat.”
“And he has six kids?”
She smiled. “Four.”
It might have been the way the sun was gilding the tips of her eyelashes, or the sheen of sea spray on her cheeks, but in that moment Drew knew he had never seen and would never again see anyone as beautiful as Agraciana Flores. “You could have both, you know,” he heard himself say. “The family and the career. Lots of women do it.”
“Women in your country.” She caught a piece of her hair that escaped from the colorful scarf she’d tied around her head and tucked it under the edge. “Here we are not so liberated.”
“You should consider emigrating, then.” He reached out to trace the curve of her cheek, and was startled when she whipped her head away. “Gracie?”
She stood up, gripping the wheel tightly. “There are some bottles of water in an ice chest below if you are thirsty.”
Every time he got close to her, Drew realized, she pushed him away. “I’m not—”
“I am.” She gave him a direct look. “Would you bring one for me, please?”
Drew gave up and went below to retrieve the water. The cramped space had been made into a tidy little living space, complete with a narrow bunk, an ancient but clean cookstove, and a tiny bathroom. It should have been hot and airless, but the old man had rigged some sort of ventilation system, and a steady stream of cool, salt-tinged air wafted in Drew’s face.
He noticed a crate stashed in one corner that had been filled with magazines and books, all written in Spanish but obviously about sailing and fishing.
“So
Papi
likes to read.” He picked up one paperback and thumbed through it before something fluttered out of the pages. He bent to pick up a small photograph of a petite, dark-haired child in a red dress standing with a younger version of
Papi
in front of the old boat.
“She’s still your girl, isn’t she, old man?” He noticed what he first assumed was a sleeve was actually a bandage on the child’s right arm. “But who the hell hurt her?”
He knew he should have replaced the photo, but he gave in to the impulse and tucked it into his pocket before grabbing a bottle of water.
Gracie had reverted back to her cool, distant composure when he rejoined her on deck, and thanked him politely when he handed her the bottle. “I apologize for my temper. I never discuss such matters with a stranger.”
The photo in his pocket, the image of the child she had been, felt for a moment as stiff as the line of her back. Drew thought of the bandage on the little arm, the unsmiling old Mexican, and all the bits from the sea Gracie had used to decorate her cottage. When they’d arrived at her childhood home, the way she had hesitated, just for a fraction of a second, before speaking to her father was almost as telling as the cold indifference the old man had shown both of them. Drew knew love and fear, and saw both in Gracie, but there was something more. Something had caused a serious rift between her and her family, and he sensed it had nothing at all to do with her working in the city.
He was also tired of being shut out by whatever it was. “Can you stop the boat?”
She wouldn’t look at him. “We should keep going.”
“We will, in a minute,” he lied.
Gracie throttled down, shutting off the engine before turning to him. “We don’t have time for—”
“I’m not a stranger to you. Not since last night.” Drew took her hands in his. “Talk to me.”
“I have nothing to say.” She tried to extract herself from his grip. “I don’t know you.”
“Wrong.” He held on. “I told you my life story. You know me better than my mother. I’m your friend.”
“I am not friends with liars or impostors,” she flared.
Suddenly Drew understood her aloofness and what she might be hiding behind it. “You don’t have anyone, do you? Ever since you left the village, you’ve been alone.”
Gracie paled, and then her shoulders drooped. “There is no time for friends,” she said, her voice thin and hurt. “What I do is more important. I protect what I love.”

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