Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  The narrow two-lane highway looked like the proverbial road to nowhere, but suddenly on the other side of a curve it opened into an empty graveled expanse, which was flanked on two sides by nothing but cliffs and on the third by a green mound. Gage parked as close to it as he could, and got out of the car. Standing on the mountainside plateau, all he saw beyond the edges of the parking area were rock-dotted stretches of nothing.

  Jesus Christ. How in hell were they going to find Ethan in all that?

  When the passenger door slammed, he turned around to see Eslin, with Ramón jogging behind her, disappear around the overgrown flank of the humped green mound. Gage followed them, quickening his pace as he rounded what he guessed was a half-buried pyramid. On the other side of it lay a chinked, uneven slab of stone edged with crumbling columns. He stopped at the top of a flight of giant-sized steps.

  Someone ten to twelve feet tall could have climbed them with ease; he had to step sideways down each riser as he descended to the courtyard below. Except for the scrape of his boots on the stones there were no sounds, no wind, no bird or insect noises, no nothing. He didn’t like this place. He didn’t like it at all.

  Eslin stood near the center of the courtyard, in the midst of crumbled walls and truncated pyramids. Ten or so feet away from her, Ramón sat on a hump of stone watching her. She turned in a slow circle to face Gage, her forehead wrinkled, the fingers of her right hand closed around the horseshoe nail at her throat.

  “Nothing here,” she murmured, as he came up beside her. “Absolutely nothing. Let’s try someplace else.”

  They walked toward a half-buried pyramid at the far end of the courtyard. Groaning under his breath, Gage trailed the two of them through the ruins for what seemed an eternity as the sun rose higher in the brilliant blue sky. It was cool yet hot, and he began to sweat as he paused an hour and a half later on the portico of a palace and looked down at two old women leaning on canes beneath pink and white umbrellas as they hobbled across the uneven grass.

  God he wanted out of here, but sighed heavily and turned to follow Eslin and Ramón between a gap in a stone wall and the six or so feet left of a column with faint traces of red paint still visible on its weathered surface. Beyond it and the wall stretched a remarkably well-preserved patio, but Gage’s feet stuck suddenly to the pavement, and his heart began to pound as he saw Eslin and Ramón, their sweaters vivid shades of green against the colorless stone, trailing a group of tourists led by a guide down a narrow passage with eight or so feet of wall still standing on either side.

  He couldn’t breathe as he watched Eslin and Ramón disappear behind the tour group through a small square doorway no more than five and a half feet high. Over the ringing in his ears he heard the guide ushering them inside say something in heavily accented English about the tombs of kings and nobles, and he shuddered as he wheeled away. Steps for giants and mausoleums for pygmies. This place was weird, dead and weird and creepy.

  Pacing back and forth, he waited for them at the mouth of the walkway. Something flickered on the edge of his vision, but each time he looked up or over his shoulder there was nothing there. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but his palms were cold and clammy with sweat when Eslin and Ramón came out of the tomb.

  “C’mon!” Ramón called over his shoulder. “The ball court’s over here!”

  “Hey, pal!” Gage shouted, wheeling sharply on his heel. “This isn’t a sightseeing expedition!”

  One or two people from the tour cast him glances that asked, Then what are you doing here? Gage glared at them and they looked away.

  “It’s the only place I haven’t tried yet,” Eslin said, slipping her left hand around his right arm. “Besides, he’s having so much fun discovering his cultural heritage.”

  “It isn’t that. I just don’t like this place. I think the altitude’s getting to me,” he said, shrugging and drawing her with him as he struck off in the direction Ramón had taken.

  “You do look a little green around the gills,” Eslin observed.

  Through his denim sleeve she could feel the muscles in his arm trembling beneath her fingers. Once they’d left the patio and the tour group behind, she tugged Gage around to face her, and pressed her right hand to his chest. His heart thudded wildly beneath her palm.

  “I don’t think it’s the altitude.”

  “Christ, Eslin, please,” he swore, his voice shaky, not harsh.

  Pulling her with him, he went after Ramón. He wasn’t angry, he was scared. Eslin sensed it and wrapped her right hand reassuringly over her left on his elbow.

  “What you have,” she told him as kindly as she could, “is a good old-fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies.”

  Gage stopped shortly and looked at her askance.

  “The what?”

  “It’s also known as the willies,” she explained gently, “and it’s the word Doc uses to describe an unreasonable or seemingly baseless fear—or adverse reaction to something. A person, a thing, but it’s usually a place.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” he asked sourly, “that I feel like my skin’s going to crawl off my bones any second now because this place has bad vibes?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that it does for you. I don’t feel anything one way or the other, and neither does Ramón.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then started walking again, almost running. She ran forward with him, stumbling a little to keep up.

  “We don’t have time for this crap, Eslin.” He jammed his hands deeper into his pockets. “It’s pushing eleven o’clock at least.”

  “Ten-thirteen,” she corrected him, smiling apologetically as he glared at her over his shoulder.

  “Thirteen hours left, more or less.”

  The number sent a shiver up his back. Of all the times for unlucky thirteen to come up.

  “Let’s find Ramón,” he said grimly, “and get the hell out of here.”

  The I-shaped ball court, a tufted stretch of grass bounded on one side by what was left of the main courtyard wall, lay on the southeast end of the ruins between two overgrown humps of earth, listed simply on the map in the brochure Eslin tugged out of her purse as Mound A and Mound P. In a Thinker-like pose Ramón sat on a lump of rock protruding from the grass near the half-tumbled wall, his head bent over a book opened on his knee. He looked up and grinned at the sound of their footsteps in the grass.

  “Hey, listen to this,” he said, as he raised the book and read, “ ‘Fascinating is the ball court, where a game similar to a combination of soccer and basketball was played. Its rituals and rules became inextricably involved with forms of worship. Altars at the courts indicate that players were sometimes sacrificed at the end of the game. It is thought that the captain of the winning team cut out the heart of his rival. On the evening before the game, the players made penitence, and at midnight the next, with solemn ceremony, the tutelary gods were placed in niches around the court, and the game began.’ “ Ramón looked up, a puzzled frown on his face. “What’s tutelary mean?”

  “It means a guardian or protector,” Gage told him, shivering at the unaccountable chill crawling up his back. “What the hell book is that?”

  The boy held it up and showed him a dog-eared and obviously much read copy of Factor’s Mexico.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “It was laying here on the wall.”

  “Well, put it back so whoever left it can—”

  A hissing gasp from Eslin made Gage turn around in time to see her struggling the neck chain over her head. She dropped it in the grass and backed away from it, rubbing her throat.

  “It’s so cold,” she said, her voice a trembly murmur, her eyes huge as she looked up at him. “So cold it burns.”

  “Far out,” Ramón breathed, slapping the book down on its pages as he slid off the wall and started toward the horseshoe nail glittering in the grass.

  By half a step Gage beat him to it and swept it off the ground in his left hand. The chain dangled over
his knuckles and the nail shone, bouncing in the sun.

  “Feels warm to me,” he said, raising his eyes to Eslin’s face as he straightened.

  Slow as she’d been to catch on to the neck chain, Eslin was pretty sure now what its warmth in Gage’s hand meant. Judging from the lines drawing heavily at the corners of his eyes and mouth, she had a feeling that he knew it, too, but didn’t dare ask him as he stared at her steadily, then glanced down abruptly at the neck chain in his hand.

  The horseshoe nail was more than warm now in the hollow of his palm, it was—vibrating—like an electrical wire singing in the wind. His skin itched and prickled where the nail touched it. When he looked back at Eslin he couldn’t see her trembling, but he could feel it. She knew as well as he that as desperately as he wanted to, he couldn’t throw the damn neck chain away. With trembling fingers he draped the chain around his neck.

  “Promise me,” he said to Eslin, as he unzipped his jacket partway and tucked the horseshoe nail inside his shirt, “that you’ll never breathe a word about this to my mother or Fitzsimmons.

  “Promise.” Eslin smiled, as she crossed her index finger over her heart.

  “Ramón?” Gage zipped up his jacket halfway as he turned toward him.

  “I don’t know what I’m promising not to tell.” He shrugged, glanced quizzically at Gage, then at Eslin. “But I promise.”

  “You don’t have to know,” Gage told him. “Why don’t you see if you can find out who that book belongs to?”

  “You sound like my mother when you say things like that.” Ramón made a face at him as he picked up the guide from the wall. “Why don’t you just tell me to get lost for a few minutes so you can talk to Eslin in private?”

  “Get lost, Ramón.” Gage smiled. “And take the book with you.”

  “I’m gone.” He grinned, and trotted off down the ball court.

  Over his shoulder Gage watched Ramón run. Eslin had said that these ruins were his cultural heritage, and he wondered if that wasn’t part of the reason Byrne had included Ramón. Small and lithe as he was, he could have played ball here twenty-five hundred years ago and won, but Gage wasn’t sure Ramón could’ve cut out his rival’s heart. He wasn’t even sure he could.

  You’ll find out.

  He heard the words as clearly as if they’d been spoken out loud by someone standing next to him, but Eslin was there and it hadn’t been her voice. At least he didn’t think so.

  Eslin pressed her fingers against the bump the neck chain made in the front of his shirt.

  “It’s vibrating, isn’t it?” She looked up at him with a wondrous smile on her face.

  “Like crazy. Do you have any idea what’s happening here?”

  ‘The neck chain is a link, I know that much.” She caught a stray tendril of hair fluttering across her eyes and tucked it behind her right ear. “But I haven’t the faintest idea how or why it works.”

  “A link between what?”

  “Between who,” Eslin corrected him. “Between you and me, for starters, but beyond that, I don’t know.”

  She shrugged a little and tried to look vague, but didn’t quite manage it.

  “Oh c’mon, Eslin.” Gage cocked his head dubiously to one side. “Ganymede’s a horse, not a human being. Animals have instincts. They react, they don’t reason.”

  “That’s what you’re experiencing right now—an adverse and instinctive reaction to Monte Alban. It’s an intuitive alarm, and its no different from a horse reading fear off a person or sensing danger from an outside source.”

  Gage smirked.

  “You’re a horse trainer, Gage, and you know damn well that I’m right,” Eslin said impatiently. “Horses are telepathic—and so are you.”

  He would’ve denied it, or at least tried, if Ramón hadn’t vaulted himself over the wall just then.

  “I think we’ve got trouble,” the boy announced.

  “What kind of trouble?” Gage asked.

  “One of the tour guides looks an awful lot like one of Marco’s cousins.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Strolling around the parking lot, probably so he can keep an eye on our car. And guess what? He’s got a two-way radio too.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No. I saw him first, gave the book to one of the other guides, and came straight back.”

  “Shit,” Gage muttered.

  “What if he isn’t here to make sure we don’t find Ethan, but to make sure we do?” Eslin asked quietly.

  Gage looked at her. “I never thought of that.”

  “Neither did I. Ramón did,” she admitted.

  As Gage glanced at him over his right shoulder, the boy smiled sheepishly and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops.

  “If that’s so,” Gage told him, “then we’re walking into a trap.”

  “I figured that out too,” Ramón replied dryly.

  Eslin hadn’t, but now it seemed so obvious. Remembering one of the more ominous sentences in Marco Byrne’s second letter—I’ve had ten years to plot the revenge my father’s memory cries for, and let me assure you that there isn’t the tiniest of flaws in my plan—she felt scared.

  “We could raise Faber and his partner on the radio and have them pick up Marco’s cousin,” Ramón suggested.

  “No. If he doesn’t call in like he’s supposed to, Byrne will get suspicious. We don’t want to make him nervous or shake his confidence, we just want to keep him off balance.”

  “What do you mean?” Eslin asked.

  “I mean that his cousin being here means we’re getting close—which we already knew. He probably does work here as a guide, which makes him the perfect lookout. It also means he speaks English.”

  “So what?” Ramón interjected.

  “So here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to pretend that we don’t recognize him. Second, when we get close enough to him so he can hear what we’re saying, Eslin’s going to say that she just can’t understand it, she was so sure, but maybe if she eats lunch, rests for a while, and tries again she’ll get better results. I’m going to agree, then we’re going to get into the car and leave.”

  For a moment Ramón looked confused, then a slow smile spread across his face.

  “Oh, I get it,” he breathed. “He’ll buzz Marco on the radio, tell him we’ve left but we’re coming back, only we’re not going to, are we?”

  “Hell, no.” Gage smiled back at him. “We’re going to be looking elsewhere, but Byrne won’t know that.”

  “Brilliant, man.” Ramón grinned. “I’ll go make sure he’s still hanging around the car.”

  He took off at a run, and Eslin shaded her eyes with her left hand as she squinted up at Gage’s face.

  “Where are we going to look?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” he admitted. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Twice I’ve dreamed about a waterfall,” she told him. “Nothing like Niagara, but the water’s very clear and the rocks around it are covered with moss.”

  “It’s a beginning.” He tried to smile as he led the way back to the car.

  Once they’d climbed the giant steps and cleared the half-buried pyramid, Eslin saw Ramón leaning nonchalantly on the right front fender of the VW, his back turned to the slim, dark-skinned man strolling down the row of cars in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and pants. Reflective sunglasses covered his eyes and he rested a hand on the black, boxlike radio clipped to his thick leather utility belt.

  Eslin did her best to look perplexed as the man drew closer to them. He was no more than ten yards away now, and there was no mistaking Alberto’s Aztec nose, or the almost beautiful curve of Marco’s mouth.

  “I just don’t understand it,” she began plaintively. “It felt so right.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Gage said curtly, “you did the best you could.”

  “Maybe if I rest awhile,” she responded. “I feel so tired. Could we come back after lunch?”

/>   “Why the hell not?” He frowned sourly as Ramón got into the backseat of the car.

  When Gage started the engine, the guide turned casually and strolled away from the VW.

  “Keep an eye on him, Ramón,” he said, as he backed the VW out of the parking space.

  “Bingo,” Ramón said, as Gage pulled out on the highway. “He’s on the radio.”

  Beside him Eslin sighed and relaxed in her seat. Gage could feel her heart pounding and the horseshoe nail chilling against his chest as the VW wound its way down the green-flanked mountain. By the time the highway flattened out and he could see the beige stucco walls and red-tiled roofs of the city, it was so cold he had to grit his teeth to keep them from chattering.

  “We’ve got to go back,” he said, frowning as he shifted into a lower gear and started looking for a place to turn around. “They’re someplace up in those damn hills. We’ll drive the car as far as we can—”

  “Wait a minute. Look over there,” Eslin said, pointing to her right.

  Gage didn’t see anything at first but a small pink stucco house sitting back from the highway behind a screen of trees. When the wind moved the leafy treetops, he saw the corral and the horses milling inside it.

  “Maybe we can rent them for the day,” Eslin suggested.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Gage eased the VW onto the rutted dirt track that led up to the little stucco house. As he got out of the car, an old Mexican man appeared behind the weather-beaten screen door, and eyed them suspiciously.

  “Uh-oh,” Ramón muttered, stretching out of the car beside Gage. “He looks like one tough old Indian to me.”

  “Money talks,” Gage said. “C’mon, let’s go haggle.”

  Chapter 28

  Thirty-five minutes later and five hundred dollars poorer, they rode away from the pink stucco house on three rangy horses. When Gage looked back at the house, he saw the old man standing on a cracked cement stoop patting his bulging shirt pocket.