Skykeepers (3 page)

“Besides,” she muttered, “it’s not like you had anything going on at home. Perfect time for a trip to non-paradise.” She’d just been fired for getting too creative with the head chef’s recipes—again—and she was annoyingly single some six months after a relationship she’d imagined was leading to marriage had turned out to be going nowhere fast. Figuring she was already depressed, and having been unable to get Ambrose out of her head since their brief meeting over the summer, she had tried tracking him down and wound up discovering instead that he’d fallen off the grid.

Missing, presumed dead.

Tightening her grip on the .22, she forged onward. The bright white flashlight beam made jarringly modern-looking shadows in the ancient stone tunnel, and the creepy-crawly nerves in her stomach started to grow claws. She’d been inside the temple before, of course, but that was years ago, and she’d been with Ambrose. More, that had been back when she’d still seen him as more than he was—a real-life Indiana Jones who’d let her come along on his adventures because he’d wanted her there, more even than he’d wanted Pim, who’d always stayed behind. Eventually, though, Sasha had realized those “adventures” were more uncomfortable than exciting, and he’d wanted her there not for her company, but because he’d needed a fellow role-player in his delusions, which over the years had gone from bedtime stories of magical princesses to twisted, apocalyptic ravings.

An echo of anger brushed against her jangling nerves, but she continued along the stone tunnel, skirting the triggered pit trap near the entrance. Beyond the pit trap, the tunnel continued onward to an intersection, where Ambrose had liked to sit and sip the bitter maize-and-chocolate drink she’d made for him from locally bought cacao.

Sasha was pretty sure that was where her interest in cooking—and chocolate—had started, those hours she’d spent watching the villagers separate the cacao beans from the fleshy pods, then ferment them, roast them, grind them, and finally mix the powder with maize to make the sacred
chorote
, which combined the two plants that formed the basis of the villagers’ lives and livelihoods. Ambrose had insisted she’d turned to cooking simply out of rebellion. And maybe that had been a part of it, too.

Still, the smell and taste of
chorote
coated her senses as she approached the tunnel fork. Her brain was so primed to see a campsite, and maybe a body, that it took her a few seconds to process what she was actually seeing. There was no campsite, no body; there was only a wall of rubble. The hewn slabs that had lined the corridor had fallen inward, mixing with crumbled limestone, gritty dirt, and more rocks.

The tunnel had caved in, and the damage looked recent.

She hissed out a breath of dismay as her overactive brain filled with images of her father buried beneath the debris, dying there, crushed and suffering.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, no.
Ambrose
.” The name echoed along the corridor and returned to her on a rattle of sound. She ignored both as she rushed to the collapsed spot. Maybe he was close to the edge. Maybe she could get at him somehow.
Maybe
, some foolishly hopeful part of her said,
he’s trapped on the other side with all his camping gear and rations, waiting for someone to dig him out
.

She was so focused on the rubble that she initially missed seeing a strange shadow over to one side, partially shielded behind a larger chunk of stone. Then it caught her eye. She froze, disbelieving, then turned slowly and moved around the larger stone to get a better look. Her heart shuddered to a stop at the sight confronting her, then started pounding again, hard and fast. “No,” she whispered. Then louder, “No!”

A human skull sat atop a stack of debris that had been carefully formed into the shape of a knee-high pyramid, mimicking the skull piles, the
tzomplanti
that the more warlike Mesoamerican cultures had used to boast of their victories. At first her mind tried to tell her that the skull atop the pile was ancient, an artifact. But it still wore clinging flesh that ended raggedly where the neck had been severed, along with a long, gray-shot ponytail caught at the nape in a ratty leather thong.

She knew that ponytail, knew that scrap of leather.Ambrose had been wearing it the last time she’d seen him.

No
, she thought as desperation flared.
Oh, no. Please, no. Not like this
.

Gagging on bile and a huge, awful surge of emotion she hadn’t expected to feel, she crossed her arms over her stomach, bent double by the terrible realization that he hadn’t died naturally, doing what he loved.
Tzomplanti
were only used for enemies and sacrifices, which suggested he’d been murdered. But who had killed him? Why? And where was the rest of him? She didn’t see his body, which somehow made the presentation of his head that much more gruesome. The wrongness of it slammed through her, threatened to take her over. She’d thought she’d been prepared to find him, and maybe she had been, but not like this, never like this. What the hell had happened in the temple?

She shuddered with grief and an awful, racking guilt. But even through those emotions, the old instincts her father had drummed into her long ago flared to life, warning her that she might not be as safe alone in the backcountry as she’d thought.

Her pulse picked up, sending adrenaline skimming through her veins. Someone had killed Ambrose, or at the very least, had cut off his head and arranged him on the
tzomplanti
. That suggested they had been more than bandits. Maybe some of the locals had decided they wanted him out of the temple. But this had been his place for years. What had changed? Had it been politics? Treasure hunters?

Or was it something connected to the massive fantasy that had structured his life? That possibility seemed horribly likely, given that these were the years he’d believed would bring terrible battles between good and evil.

Ambrose had always claimed there were others like him, others who believed the world might end in 2012. More, she’d heard the rumblings, seen the documentaries. Modern culture was catching up with Ambrose’s long-held delusions. What if those delusions had somehow spelled his end? What if he’d been killed in an escalating move by people who thought that there was a supernatural war coming, and they were the chosen warriors?

The idea was abhorrent. And, based on all that she’d seen and heard growing up, it was all too possible.

“Oh, Da,” she said, using the affectionate nickname she’d dropped years ago, when she’d started to realize that her father might function well enough on a day-to day basis, but he wasn’t all the way sane. “I should’ve had you declared, should’ve put you somewhere you could’ve gotten help.” But she hadn’t been tough enough to take the step when he hadn’t been hurting anyone except her.

“That wouldn’t have changed the outcome.”

Gasping at the sound of a stranger’s voice, Sasha lunged to her feet and spun, holding the .22 cross-handed with the flashlight. The white beam illuminated a man wearing jeans, workboots, and a heavy-metal concert tee that made him look like he should’ve been in a rock band road crew, not a Mayan ruin. His hair glinted with ruddy highlights against the flashlit shadows, and he was freaking massive, topping her by a good six inches in height and outweighing her by at least eighty pounds. Too late she realized that they—whoever
they
were—must have been monitoring the ruin.

“Don’t move,” she ordered, voice shaking. “Don’t you frigging—”

Something slammed into her from the side, cutting her off midthreat. Sasha twisted as she fell, and caught a quick impression of a woman with long hair and perfect features, incongruously wearing a tiny-waisted suit jacket and flowing pants. Then the flashlight went flying, bounced off the wall, and fell to the floor, where it partially illuminated the scene.

Fighting in silence, as Ambrose had taught her, dropping into action-reaction mode even as her thoughts spun with a city girl’s panic, Sasha rammed an elbow into the woman’s stomach, yanked her gun up, and fired in the man’s direction. The .22 went off with the wimpy pop typical of the caliber, but the big man spun away, cursing and grabbing at his upper arm. Sasha ducked and went for a foot sweep, but she was out of practice and a split second too late. The woman grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the floor, then did the same with her hand, sending the .22 flinging free.

The world pinwheeled as rough hands grabbed Sasha from behind, pinned her arms, and lifted her up to her feet and then off them. The man’s booted foot glanced off the flashlight, which spun and wound up pointed at the
tzomplanti
, lighting Ambrose’s skull with vile menace.

“Let me go!” Sasha struggled ferociously but her captor didn’t even grunt when she got an elbow back into his injured arm.

“For fuck’s sake, stick her already,” he snapped at the woman, who had backed off, breathing hard, her eyes glinting with battle rage and glee.

“No!” Sasha strained against his hold, screaming as the woman withdrew a syringe from her pocket and advanced to inject its contents into Sasha’s upper arm. The burning sting of the needle was followed by cool effervescence, and Sasha’s world went swimmy. Desperation flared as she sagged limply in the big man’s hold.

No
, she cried inwardly.
Not like this. Please
. She didn’t know who she was talking to—she’d abandoned Ambrose’s gods when she ran away from him. Strangely, though, she thought she heard a whisper of answer, a familiar voice saying,
Have faith
.

But faith was something she’d never been big on. Hadn’t ever had a reason to be.

“Get the light and the gun,” the man ordered. “And take her pack. Make sure we’re not leaving anything of hers behind.”

“What about the skull?”

“Leave it. It’ll fuck with the Nightkeepers’ heads if they ever find this place.” He shifted his grip on Sasha, preparing to sling her over his shoulder. As he did so, the woman snagged the flashlight, and its beam played across the three of them. Sasha moaned when she caught sight of her captor’s inner forearm, where he wore a single tattoo. She didn’t know the meaning of the bloodred quatrefoil, but she sure as shit recognized the tat’s location. It was exactly where the mythical Nightkeepers had been marked with Mayan glyphs representing their bloodlines and magical talents. It was also where Ambrose had worn a huge scar, as though he’d burned away similar marks long ago—or wanted people to think he had.

Despair howled through her as unconsciousness closed in. She fought the drug, fought the reality of her capture, and the growing fear that she was trapped in some giant, live-action role-playing game based on her father’s bloodthirsty delusions. And, most of all, she fought the sick heartache that came from knowing there was nobody out in the real world who would think to look for her until it was far too late.

Michael Stone stood atop a midsize Mayan ruin called the watchtower, his dark, shoulder-length hair blowing a little in the sea breeze. Behind him was an expanse of lush, stone-studded greenery; ahead was a white stone cliff that dropped steeply to a gleaming, tourist-dotted strip of coral beach. Beyond that was the vibrant blue-green of the Caribbean.

It was a hell of a view, that was for sure.

The ruined port city was called Tulum, which meant “wall” in Spanish and referred to the sturdy stone balustrade that enclosed the city on three sides, with the cliff and ocean forming the fourth. The fortification was impressive, even in ruins, but it hadn’t protected the city from the ravages of the conquistadors and their missionaries. And in the almost five hundred years since Cortés first landed, the place had become a tourist trap, due largely to its small, walkable size and prime beachfront location.

The deets spooled through Michael’s brain, courtesy of the report he’d downloaded from his e-mail a couple of hours earlier. It’d been sent by the Nightkeepers’ archivist, Jade, his former lover-turned-friend. The thought of her brought a twinge of guilt and regret, but both had become too-familiar companions over the past year-plus, ever since the talent ceremony that had unlocked a shit-ton more than just his warrior’s talent. Since he couldn’t change the past—his and Jade’s or otherwise—he pushed aside the guilt and tried to focus on what he ought to be doing, namely reporting back to home base with a whole lot of negatives.

Still, though, he hesitated, standing alone atop a pyramid where one of his ancestors might have stood centuries earlier. Sunlight glinted on the dark sunglasses that shaded Michael’s piercing eyes, which were so dark green they were nearly black in some lights. A sea breeze tugged at his tee, molding the fabric to his big, fighting-lean body as he pictured that hypothetical ancestor, a Nightkeeper mage like himself. The image didn’t last long, though, largely because Michael wasn’t nearly as deep into the whole ancestor-worship thing as some of the others. Not like the
winikin
, who saw it as their duty—one among many—to remind the Nightkeepers of their history, usually when they least expected or wanted it. Sort of like a Discovery Channel sneak attack. Despite the knee-jerk avoidance the lectures had spawned in him, though, Michael found himself struck by the ruins and their view of the sea. He could almost picture the seagoing outriggers the ancient Maya had used to transport their goods along the coast, the pack trains coming from the inland city-states, and the open-air market that had formed where the two commerce streams met at Tulum’s port.

And you’re
so
incredibly stalling, it’s not even funny
, he thought wryly, forcing himself to palm his phone out of his pocket and speed-dial Strike’s cell.

The Nightkeepers’ king picked up on the third ring. “Tell me something good.”

“Sorry. I’ve got bad, bad, and more bad.”