by Ann Charles
“Exactly. It came down to my family or my career.” She shrugged. “When I took a moment to really think about it, the decision was easy.” Plus, this job allowed her the opportunity to chase down her mom’s theories. She could work on proving them without having to petition each year for a new grant to pay for an old theory.
“Family versus career,” Quint said, nodding. “I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Nothing.” He stood and moved over to another wall. “What’s this?” He pointed at the carving Daisy had found that prophesized the return of the lord of death when the twin scribes arrived at the site.
She pushed to her feet and joined him, brushing the dust off her pants. “It’s one of your predecessors, sitting at the king’s feet, playing secretary.” The young scribe’s profile was carved in detail, including spools in his ears and a ring in his nose. “The other twin is on a carving over there, recording the king’s lineage.”
“What’s that on his leg?”
Angling her flashlight over the scribe’s leg, she studied the carving for a moment. “From what I can tell, it looks like a sun with a skeleton face carved inside of it.”
Quint frowned down at her with a sudden intensity that made her take a step back. “Are you sure?”
“Mostly. Why?”
“Gertrude has a tattoo on the back of her neck. It’s a sun with a skeleton face inside of it. I saw it yesterday while making rounds, looking at boots.”
“That’s an odd coincidence,” she said slowly, feeling it out. Gertrude usually had her hair down, so Angélica hadn’t noticed her tattoo before.
“What’s it mean?”
She wiped at a drop of sweat rolling down her cheek. “Only she knows that, since tattoos are personal. But I can tell you that for the Maya the sun is a symbol of awareness and enlightenment. It often represents the creation of life or life itself. The skull is usually a symbol of the lord of death and the Underworld.”
Quint crossed his arms. “So mixing the two together could mean she’s aware of Yum Cimil?”
“Sure. Or she could just like mixing life with death in symbolism to show off her wild side. Unless we ask her what that tattoo means to her, we could speculate all day about it. Trust me, I know. This is the shit I do for a living and often pull my hair out in the process.”
“There’s something else,” he said. “When I was in the mess tent this morning before anyone else had shown up, Gertrude came in. When she saw me, she came over and sat down next to me, asking me all sorts of questions about where I’m from and what sort of adventures my job involves.” He squeezed the back of his neck. “I figured she was just making small talk, maybe interested in pursuing a photojournalism career, but then she did something that sort of blew me out of the water.”
“What?”
“She leaned in close and sniffed my neck.”
“She did what?”
“Smelled me. It reminded me of a dog checking me out. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she liked the scent of my cologne.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t wearing any cologne. After that, she asked me if I had any ancestors from the Black Forest.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. My dad’s family has German ancestry, but what did that matter? The woman had just sniffed me.”
“Maybe she has a crush on you.”
“Please, sweetheart. I don’t think so. I’m almost twice her age.”
“She still might be crushing on you. I certainly am, although I’m not so bonkers about you that I’d want to smell your shirt after you pulled an all-nighter worrying about something attacking the camp.”
“A crush?” He grinned. “I’d like to see what you’re like in the sack when you’ve really fallen for a guy.”
He already had the other night in their tent. She may not have said those three little words, but she’d certainly done her best to show him. “Did she say anything else about your smell or your ancestry?”
“No. Bernard walked in then. She left me to join him.”
“That’s odd.” She looked back at the carving. “And you’re certain this sun with the skeleton looks like her tattoo?”
“Well, that’s carved on stone, which leaves a lot of room for detail, but mostly, yes. What are the chances of it being similar, though?”
Angélica shrugged. “If Gertrude is really into the Maya, she might have seen a similar symbol in a reference book or textbook on Maya art. She might be obsessed enough to get a tattoo of it. Look up Maya-inspired tattoos on the internet sometime—there are thousands of them.” She returned to her tools, gathering the rice paper rubs she’d made. “For the Maya people, tattoos were one of the ways they could please their gods. Body mutilation done for a god’s appreciation was common. Filed teeth, body piercing, altering skull shape—those were all done in part to appease the gods.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have any Maya tattoos.”
She chuckled. “I’m afraid if I get started I won’t stop. There are too many symbols that mean something to me based on my history in the Yucatán. I couldn’t pick just a few.” She grabbed her backpack and slid her notebook and rubbings into it. “To be honest, the tattoo doesn’t concern me as much as a pretty young grad student sniffing around my boyfriend,” she joked … sort of.
Sniffing was stepping over a line she’d drawn around Quint. He was hers while he was here, dammit.
“There’s something else,” he said.
Something in his tone made her stop and look over at him. “What?”
“After breakfast was over, she came up to me again.”
Angélica remembered. She’d been watching that exchange. “I noticed her talking to you by the soap bucket.”
“At the time, I was still kind of weirded out by her sniffing me and didn’t put much thought into it, but after seeing these carvings with the twins, I’m sort of wondering if she knows something about Maverick that we don’t.”
“Why? What did she say?”
“She asked me if I found it curious that two scribes were seduced into returning to this particular dig site.”
Angélica frowned, wondering how Gertrude knew of the glyphs prophesizing about the twin scribes. Then a light went on over her head. “Oh, Daisy shares a tent with Jane and Gertrude. She must have told them about the warning in here after she found it that day.”
“So you think Gertrude is just spinning webs?”
“Possibly. She might be in need of attention, seeking it out via different physical means and mental games.”
“Or she could be slightly delusional?”
“Or that. The heat down here sometimes affects people mentally. It’s like the bends that way.”
“Decompression sickness?”
She nodded. “The neurological symptoms of it, anyway. I’ve seen visitors suffer from visual abnormalities, unexplained behavioral changes, confusion and memory loss, and more. Between dehydration and possible sunstroke, this place can knock your knees out from under you. That’s why I suggested at the last site and this one that you drink a lot of water and rest up when you first arrived.”
“Suggested, you say?” he smirked. “More like ordered.”
“Come to think of it,” she continued, lightly smacking him for his smartass comment. “Maybe that’s what’s going on with Jane. Between the heat and the snakebite, she may be struggling mentally. The Yucatán jungle can crack a brain.”
“More like melt it.” Quint took her backpack from her. “You ready to go?”
“Yes. I want to stop by the mine on the way back to the tents, though.”
He groaned, grabbing her dad’s duffel bag on their way out of the chamber.
“You don’t have to go through the wall with me, Parker, or even inside of the mine for that matter.” She led the way outside. “I can check it out on my own.”
“I can let you go inside a hole in the earth full of skulls and bones alone?” His guffaw overflowed with sarcasm. �
��Not going to happen. Lead the way. The Underworld awaits us.”
She bumped shoulders with him as they walked, poking him in the ribs, trying to make him smile. “Come on, Eeyore, cheer up. I’ll make this quick. I just want to see the chamber and see if it looks similar to the one below the Chakmo’ol Temple.”
“And if it does?”
“Then I can theorize that both were built by the same people. After I do some research work back in Cancun, I may be able to come up with a rough date for the pieces and cave art.”
Quint let her continue to lead the way into the mine. She helped him fit her backpack and her dad’s bag through the strangler fig’s roots.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“Uh, into the Maya Underworld?” he asked back as they stepped into the larger chamber. “Or as Pedro calls it, a Maya hellhole.”
She laughed, ducking into the tunnel leading back to the stone wall. “I wasn’t talking about where we are going in this mine. I mean where are we going per the deal I made with you yesterday?”
“Ah. No questions asked, remember?”
“Yeah, but I thought you meant at the time of the deal.”
“I meant no questions asked, period. I’ll let you know where when we’re on our way.”
“Sounds mysterious,” she said, rounding the last bend before the wall.
“Well, you know me. I’m an incredibly enigmatic puzzle without any visible edge pieces.”
“You’re incredible, all right. Incredibly full of bullsh—” The words froze on her tongue. She stopped so fast Quint bumped into her.
“Oops, sorry about th …” he trailed off.
“Do you see what I see?” she whispered.
“Holy shit.”
“What did that?”
He slipped around her, approaching what remained of the wall, stepping over stones that used to be aligned in grout. Now that grout was covering the floor in powdery chunks.
“Whatever did this was a strong son of a bitch.” He frowned at all of the wall stones spread out on the floor around them. “And determined to get out of the mine.”
“Yeah.”
“We should leave,” he said.
“No.”
“Are you crazy, woman?” He pointed at what remained of the wall, which wasn’t much. “Someone or something didn’t just sneak into the mine this time. They busted the goddamned wall trying to leave in a hurry. That’s a sign to run the other way if I ever saw one.”
She pushed past him, stepping over the wall, dodging his grasp when he tried to stop her. “I’m going back there, Quint.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever did this—”
“Or whatever did it,” he interrupted, following her over the wall.
“Whoever did this is either trying to get something out of this mine or scare us away.”
“Or maybe it was clearing a path for death and destruction.”
She shook her head, shining her light on the altar stone with the figurines and the paintings on the wall above it. “You’ve been hanging out with my dad and Pedro too much.”
“And you’re letting your obsession with the past put your life at risk again.”
“You don’t understand, Quint.”
“You’re right, I don’t. You seem determined as hell to follow in your mother’s footsteps.”
She whirled, a tender nerve tweaked. “Watch what you say next, Parker. My mother wasn’t down here trying to get killed. She came to solve a mystery.”
“And how is that different from you, Angélica?” he stared at her, not backing down. His flashlight spotlighted their feet.
She opened her mouth to reply, and then decided that ending this discussion before it went any further and one of them said something they couldn’t take back was the best choice. “I’m going to see that catacomb. Wait here for me.”
She made it a few steps away when he called, “Angélica, stop!”
The urgency in his voice made her pause. She squared her shoulders and turned back to see what he had to say.
Only he wasn’t looking at her. He was squatting, pointing his flashlight at the floor of the mine.
“What?”
“Come here. You need to see this.”
She walked back and stood over him. “See what?”
He pointed at the dirt. “That’s not a boot print.”
No, it wasn’t. She lowered to her knees next to him. “What in the hell made that?”
“I don’t know.” He shone his light along the floor toward the throat of the mine and the catacomb full of bones. The large paw-like prints continued into the darkness. “But whatever it was apparently didn’t like being walled in under the earth.”
Chapter Twenty
Alux: A forest spirit.
When treated with respect, an alux will protect and bring good luck. When slighted, an alux may spread illness and wreak havoc.
“Teodoro wants to perform a sacrifice,” Angélica told Quint an hour later, joining him inside the mess tent. She eased onto the bench opposite him, her shoulders hunched as she fidgeted with the saltshaker.
A sacrifice? Quint thought. What did Teodoro want to sacrifice that had her avoiding eye contact? A young virgin in white? This was becoming one hell of a fucked-up situation in record time. Quint took a swig from his canteen, wiping off a couple of drops of water that dribbled down his chin with the back of his wrist. “What are we thinking here? A chicken or two to appease the gods?”
“Well, about that …” she trailed off, looking over his shoulder. “Dad’s here.”
Upon their return from the mine, they’d found Teodoro and Maverick filling the water bladders at the showers. Angélica told Teodoro she needed to talk to him and asked Maverick to find her father and send him her way. Quint had walked with Maverick as far as the mess tent where he stopped to refill their canteens, leaving Angélica to tell Teodoro what they’d found in the mine. Along the way, Maverick gave Quint the details on the scene of the crime, including how Teodoro had watched Rover’s physical responses to smells as they’d made their way through the trees to help them locate the kill site. Apparently, the javelina was good for more than just making Angélica smile and chewing up Dr. Diablo’s boot.
Juan’s cane creaked as he crossed the mess tent toward the carafe of cold Maya coffee María kept out between meals.
“A big Nevada birdie told me you wanted to talk to me.” He poured himself a cup. “Did you find some more snakes in the Chakmo’ol Temple? Wait, let me guess.” He stirred in a spoonful of sugar. “You found a hidden chamber full of ancient Chinese terracotta statues.”
Quint exchanged frowns with Angélica.
“Dad, you should come sit down.” She patted the seat next to her.
“I don’t want to hear about more snakes.” He limped over to them, lowering himself onto the bench next to his daughter. His gaze bounced back and forth between them, his expression sobering. “What happened?”
Angélica clasped her hands together on the table. “We may have a problem.”
May? Quint smirked. There was no “may” about it, in his opinion. A rogue predator was on the loose.
Back in the mine, Angélica and he had followed those weird prints around the bend, deeper into the mine. While the wall had been broken out toward the exit, the tracks went the opposite way. Further back, they’d caught a whiff of something foul in the still air. His comment that it was a hint of death left behind as a calling card earned him an eye-roll. After explaining to the headstrong woman that he hadn’t smelled anything besides rock and dirt the last time he was in the mine, they argued about how fresh the prints were, what could be causing the stench, and who was more stubborn—her for wanting to keep going or him for refusing to listen to her reasoning. At that point, Quint was ready to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of that mine if she tried to go any farther. Thankfully, her common sense prevailed over her curiosity and they turned back toward blue sky.<
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“We already had a problem, gatita,” Juan told her. “A snake problem. What could be worse than hundreds of cold-blooded slithering bodies full of venom?”
Angélica stared down at her clasped hands. “Something hunted and killed a full-grown jaguar last night down by the latrines.”
“Really? Was it another cat?” He lowered his coffee cup.
“That’s what I was initially thinking, but based on what Teodoro found in the forest this morning, I’m not sure.”
She went on to explain what they had witnessed the previous night and ended with a repeat of what Quint had learned from Maverick on his way to the mess tent. Blood wasn’t the only evidence of the kill left on the forest floor. The poor female jaguar had been torn in half and left for scavengers.
Juan’s forehead creased. “You should have told me the truth about what you heard last night, Angélica.”
“There’s more.” Taking a deep breath, she spilled the details of what they had found in the mine this morning. By the time she finished, her father had his head in his hands.
“I told you this place was trouble that first day we visited.” Juan peeked over his fingers at her. “We need to evacuate.”
“Damned straight,” Quint said, raising his canteen to Juan in agreement.
“Or not.” Angélica straightened her shoulders.
Here we go. Quint crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for the two of them to lock horns and begin a battle of wills.
“Angélica Mae García! How many times do I—”
She played traffic cop, both hands in the air. “Hear me out before you tear me a new asshole.”
Juan huffed. “Okay, but I can tell by the way your chin is jutting that I’m not going to like what you have to say.”
“First of all, we don’t know for sure what we’re dealing with here.”
“I do,” Juan interrupted. “Trouble. That’s what we’re dealing with here.”
“With a capital T,” Quint added. She’d given him the same song and dance at the mine. Watching her performance a second time wasn’t going to change his mind. Let Mother Nature continue burying this site under the jungle floor.
“Zip it, Parker,” she said, still focused on her dad. “Most likely it’s a rogue male mountain lion or jaguar, based on its size and strength.”