The Chosen (16 page)

One second there was solid earth beneath her feet, and the next she was falling. China waved her limbs wildly, searching for any purchase as she gained speed, but the sides of the sinkhole were slicked with damp green moss and too far apart for her hands to grab hold of anything.

Her scream echoed off the rocks, freakishly magnified as she plummeted inexorably faster and faster. The pool of light above her grew smaller and smaller. A terrified glance below showed what waited for her at the bottom: jagged points of rock, spearing upward toward her through a pool of water.

Her scream altered as she concentrated, letting the change take her, until her arms grew light, her face hard, and her body hairs stiffened into brilliant red feathers.

She squawked and pulled up from the free fall, using her body until it burned. China soared upward toward Remington, who leaned dangerously forward over the rim, a dark visage against the light that surrounded him. “China!”

Even as she crested the edge of the hole, she flew higher, until she was in the canopy of the giant trees, their foliage a wash of brilliant green. She was free of danger, but at this moment she needed something more. She needed to reassure herself she was still alive.

Her avian body naturally sought out the spaces between the branches, allowing her to go even higher until she broke through into the brilliant sunlight. With each downward beat she glimpsed the red tips of her wings. China let the rush of energy and pure joy fill her, making her lighter than air as she flew.

Of any of her forms, besides human, this was what she enjoyed most—being a bird. In parrot form she reveled in the freedom and the brilliance of her red and yellow plumage. From up here the jungle looked far different. It was a dense, rolling sea of green that stretched far toward the horizon where it met a band of turquoise water that glittered in the sun. But off in the distance to the north, she spotted an inconsistency. Something looked different. A flash of white stone among the treetops.

A mountain perhaps? And if there was a mountain, perhaps there was a spring or water, or possibly even shelter. China pumped her wings hard and flew. She didn’t want to leave Remington alone too long. There were dangers in this jungle neither of them could fight off alone.

She dipped the tip of one wing and wheeled back toward him. The leaves rushed by her, the sound of the wind rippling them filling her ears as she sped past, down through the layers of the canopy.

“China!” She heard him call her name and zeroed in on the source of his voice far down below in the thickness of the jungle. She banked left and came to rest in a tree near him. Her arms were burning, but it was a good feeling to stretch and work her muscles hard. She gripped the branch with all four toes as she walked sideways along its length.

Remington walked to the base of the tree, narrowing his eyes as he glanced up. “China, is that you?”

She cocked her head. Perhaps she ought to stay in this form for awhile. It would be much easier to lead them to the mountain if she could occasionally fly up above the trees to check their progress, but then she couldn’t tell him about what she’d seen.
Choices. Choices.

She squawked at him in response, and he smiled.

“You’d talk back to me even if you were a turtle, wouldn’t you?”

She chirped a series of calls that sounded like a harsh approximation of a human laugh, then flew down to the ground and let the heated flow of transition take her back to her human form.

The moment she stood up from her crouch, Remington wrapped her in a fierce hug. “I was afraid I’d lost you in that hole, that something awful had happened to you.”

They stood near the edge of it, holding each other. “There’s water down there,” she said matter-of-factly. “It must be an underground river of some sort. And when I was above the tree line I saw something else.”

He pulled back and locked gazes with her. “What?”

China frowned. “I don’t know really, but it was white and as tall as the trees. It seemed out of place somehow. I thought it was a mountain.”

“Or the lost temple of El Tajin.”

“Is that what we’re searching for?”

Remington nodded. “The codex said the Totonacapan were among the first peoples to meet the Spaniards when they came to Veracruz. And when war arose between the Aztecs and the conquered Totonacapan, the Totonacapan sided with the Spaniards against the Aztecs, hiding Elwin’s piece of the Book in their sacred place—the Temple of the Niches or El Tajin.”

“Why does that sound so much better than the horrible rivers and trials Diego told us about?”

“Getting to the temple is only the beginning of a more perilous journey.”

Oh joy. China shook her head. Why did everything with Hunters have to be glorious, mad, scientifically-enhanced warrior death? Why couldn’t they do anything the easy way?
I’d like to close the Gates of Nyx. Oh? Here’s the key. Return it when you’re done. Have a nice day.
Easy. Simple. She liked life simple, and Remington, his brothers, and the rest of Hunters were anything but simple.

She glanced at the sinkhole and thought about the quicksand. “Now I see why Diego lost more than half his men. This is an impossible task even for a Darkin to undertake alone.”

Remington tipped her chin up and brushed her hair back from her temple as he stared down into her face. A sudden tenderness softened his features. “But we’re not alone. We have each other.”

“How can you be so optimistic?”

Remington shrugged and smiled genuinely at her, and it was enough to boost her confidence in their capabilities too. “Sometimes optimism is all you have. And in that case, why not take it all?”

There were so many times that Remington seemed like such a complete contradiction. She’d made up her mind he was a tough and rugged Hunter, cool under pressure to the point of being ice-cold when he was focused, and then he’d do something like this where he revealed he had a tender heart and filled her with hope. The duality of him awed China. What awed her even more was how he seemed to genuinely care for her.

Only her mother had ever shown concern for her well-being. Her father in turns terrified her and beguiled her, but there was never love there.

Remington’s brow furrowed. “Are you all right?” Concern colored his tone. “You didn’t get hurt in the fall, did you?”

She waved away his concern even though it touched her heart. “You ain’t got to worry about me none. I know how to take care of myself.”

“I never doubted that for a moment,” he assured her as he kissed her cheek, then pulled away from her. He reached over and picked out a piece of the brown-colored mamey sapote fruit he’d climbed the tree to retrieve for them. They were dry and rough to the touch, like a cross between peaches and sandpaper. He cut one open with the machete to reveal a creamy soft pink-orange interior with a single big seed. “Why don’t you eat something, then we’ll go search for the lost temple you saw.”

 

 

The entire time they ate, Remington could only stare at her. China McGee was one hell of a woman. And he’d almost lost her. Well, thought he had at any rate, which was enough to make him reconsider his position on Darkin—one Darkin in particular. In fact, Remington wasn’t so sure he even thought of her as Darkin anymore. He thought of her as China—just China.

Once they’d finished their hasty meal, they packed what remained so they’d have it for later. Remington was pretty damn sure there weren’t any towns close by, or handy dry-good stores to be had between here and their destination. They were on their own, especially since he had no way to contact Monica to retrieve them now that the Spider Walker had sunk.

He’d salvaged what he could to help them on their journey, but he didn’t have the heart to tell China the odds weren’t in their favor. Even if they found the Book, he had no idea how they’d get it back in less than two weeks before the night of the new moon.

They walked for the rest of the afternoon, but the heavy vegetation, humid heat, and endless whacking to create a path had left them both exhausted.

With his machete Remington scraped dry remains from the inner bark of a dead tree to start a fire. They didn’t need the warmth, but it helped to dry their things, give them light, and deter curious animals as the jungle shadows grew and darkness fell.

Even in the desert at night there was light from the stars. Here in the jungle the dense canopy of trees blocked out even that, leaving them in inky darkness. Insects by the dozens buzzed and hummed around the edges of the firelight. China huddled close.

“What will happen if we don’t make it back?” she asked as she threw chips of wood into the smoking fire.

He didn’t know for sure. No one did. Remington wrapped his arm around her, both to give her a comfortable place to sleep and to keep her close. “Marley’s been researching this for a year or better now, trying to help Colt. As best as he can tell, if the Book of Legend isn’t reunited, then according to the prophecies, Rathe will be able to permanently open the Gates of Nyx, leaving our world vulnerable not just to the Darkin here, but to any in the universe.”

“You mean like a portal between worlds?”

“Of a kind. Marley said it has more to do with the way matter and energy relate to one another. For example, this wood is physical matter, but if I chuck it into the fire”—he matched action to words—“it becomes light and heat as the energy in it is released. Apparently humans serve that same function for some other forms of Darkin that are kept out by the Gates. They see humans as fuel.”

China frowned, determination flashing in her eyes. “Then we really don’t have any choice. We have to do this, no matter what.”

Remington nodded. “It’s tempting to think about what life would be like without all this sometimes. To just be ordinary.”

China would have given anything to have been born in his kind of ordinary world. She snorted. “My ordinary isn’t anything people would want to start with.” For one thing she’d discovered her Darkin powers early. Her mother had been startled and afraid to find a cat in her baby’s crib, and terrified when she discovered her baby
was
the cat!

Remington moved his hand along her arm in a distracted circular motion that soothed her frayed nerves. “But your mother loved you.”

Her mother had tried to love her, but it was hard because China’s mother always kept a distance between them. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to adjust to the idea that her daughter shifted at random times into other things. “Yes, as best she could.”

“And your father?”

She paused for a moment, considering the best way to answer his question as honestly as possible. Her relationship with her father was . . . confusing. While she had been under his power, she’d come to crave spending time with him, even if he frightened her with how he might harm her. But being away like this, having Remington treat her with kindness and tenderness, caused a crack in her thinking. Other ideas started to leak in. What if bringing the Book of Legend together and giving it to Rathe wasn’t the right thing to do? What if gaining his approval no longer was what she craved most? What if those Darkin Remington mentioned came through the Gates of Nyx and wiped out humanity all because she couldn’t get over her own complex and confusing issues with her father?

She pulled her knees up tight to her chest and rested her chin on them. “He was never around much. And when he did visit, it was always to take what he wanted then leave, not caring how we fared without him.”

Remington shifted, laying his cheek against the top of her head. “You didn’t have much of a family, did you?”

She gave a weary sigh. “That’s why your family is so fascinating to me. You all seem so close to one another.”

His body shifted slightly beneath her shoulder and hip as she leaned into him and the comfort of his arm around her shoulders. “It looks that way from the outside, only because no one ever saw the way Winchester and Colt fought like Hunters and Darkin over things when we were kids. Winchester was Pa’s boy and Colt Ma’s. I was pretty much left on my own.”

There was a heartbreaking edge to his voice. The sound of a small boy forgotten, who’d grown up thinking he didn’t fit in or matter. She knew that feeling so well it called out to her. Perhaps she and Remington were more alike than she’d ever dreamed.

“I remember. You said you’re the smart one. Where’d you go to school?”

He sighed. “Back east. Harvard University. It’s a different life back there.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes.”

“It gave you polish your brothers ain’t got.”

He smiled against her head; she could feel the movement of his lips against her hair. “Polish isn’t everything. Certainly it doesn’t count for much with most Darkin.”

China frowned. There was one Darkin who found polish like the kind Remington had to be exactly what he preferred and emulated himself—Rathe. She didn’t like making the comparison, but there it was. Rathe was always dressed like some fancy English lord. But unlike Remington, it didn’t enhance what he already had. Instead it was like putting an expensive dress and makeup on a whore. It didn’t fit, and the dark depraved depths of him still shone through all the highfalutin clothing and fancy manners. But she didn’t want to think on Rathe, or his sadistic ways, or how it tangled her up inside wanting his approval, yet dreading seeing him. Not now, not while she was in Remington’s arms.

Her eyes were growing heavy as the fire’s light waned. An orange glow flickered and danced in and among the glowing hearts of the coals. Remington flipped another piece of wood on the fire to keep it going, and she snuggled into him as they took turns sleeping and keeping watch through the night.

 

 

Early morning birdsong woke Remington from a stupor. He was stiff all over, and none of it in the right ways. Their clothing and hair smelled of woodsmoke. It wasn’t unpleasant, but neither was the warm vanilla scent he loved on China’s skin. He kissed her on the forehead and woke her.