by Lynn Viehl
He came at her, passing through Samuel as if he weren’t there. “Pici no die.” He tried to touch her, but his arms began to disappear, and he uttered something in his own language before he stepped back. “You save.”
Charlie nodded. “Where is Pici? How can I help her?”
“Go.” The man pointed toward the back of the villa. “Tell Colotl.” As soon as his arm dropped his body faded away into nothingness.
Charlie saw Sam sitting on the deck. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“At the moment, I’m defrosting.” Samuel brushed at the ice crystals already melting on his chest. “Whatever that thing was, contact with it causes instant frostbite.”
“Let me have a look.” Charlie knelt down beside him, brushing away the slush on his chest to expose the stiff, dark skin beneath. As she palpated the area, Sam’s flesh became more pliable. When she lifted her hand, it had already lightened to a deep pink, and then assumed its normal light caramel color. She checked the rest of his torso, finding the same process ongoing. After another minute passed, all the damaged skin had healed.
She extended one of his arms, putting her own beside it. Scratches from walking through the saw grass still made angry, crisscrossed slashes over her skin, while his didn’t have a mark on it.
“You should have said something.” Sam ran his hand down her arm, healing the scratches. “Better?”
“Scary. You not only can heal me; you’re healing yourself.” Charlie felt a tickling sensation at the base of her neck, and brushed at it. “Niman achtopa yah in Ihiyo.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Ihiyo was the first to go.” She felt a surge of impatience at having to translate it into English for him. “You shouldn’t have tried to catch him. You should have just waited. He would come to you himself soon enough.”
Samuel peered at her. “Who is Ihiyo?”
“No one of importance.” He wanted to play, she could tell, and the hunger came into her, full and ripe. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Why don’t we go to bed?”
“Perhaps a little later, after we talk.” He looked into her eyes. “How are you feeling right now?”
“I feel like having you in me.” She climbed over him, pushing him back against the deck. “But we can play here, too.” She pulled her shirt up over her head, flinging it away before she drew his hands up to her aching breasts. “Ahmo tläcacemeleh. He is not pretty to look at. Not like you.”
“Charlotte.” He cradled her face between his hands. “Come back to me.”
A different emotion streaked through her, leaching away the strange lust and making her crawl backward away from him. “Ie ixqujch. No more, please.”
Samuel caught her before she could escape and brought her up onto her knees, shaking her a little. “Charlotte, can you hear me? Something is trying to take control. You have to shut them off. Get them out of your head. Charlotte.”
“I’m here.” Charlie pushed her way through the alien emotions, panting as she emerged and slammed up her mental barriers behind her. “Jesus.” She sagged against him.
“Who’s doing this to you?” Samuel demanded as he helped her to her feet. “Is it Segundo?”
“I don’t know. They’re so strong. Coming at me from all directions.” She huddled against him as echoes of the thought streams hammered all around the mental walls she had erected. “I don’t know if I can …” She choked on bile as a tangle of fear, anger, and terror tried to push through. “No.”
He brought her face close to his. “Don’t panic. You know what you have to do. Look at me, yes, like that. I’m right here with you.”
While Samuel talked to her, Charlie used him as her anchor, keeping her thoughts trained on him as she reinforced her mental barriers.
At last she felt secure enough to relax a little. “I’m clear of them. For now, anyway.”
He kept his arm around her and lifted her chin to inspect her face. “Does it always do this to you?”
“I haven’t been keeping my guard up the way I do at home. With just you and me here, I didn’t think I had to.” She exhaled slowly as the intense nausea receded. “Usually I feel people long before I can read them, but this time … it was like they just materialized out of nowhere.”
“Do you think they’re on the island?”
“I know they are. Where, I’m not sure exactly. They’re together in a group, and they’re close, but …” She shook her head and swiped at the tears clinging to her lashes. “There were too many voices to sort out at once, and all of them were speaking in that odd language. Maybe I can try to sweep for them a little later—”
“Not after what they just did to you,” he told her. “You spoke to me in a language I’ve never before heard.” He bent to pick up her shirt. “And you were definitely not yourself,” he added as he helped her pull it on.
“I wanted to jump you. I did jump you.” She looked down at her hands, which were clenched. “Part of it was me but not me. As if someone had helped themselves to my libido.” Her lips twisted. “Then something shifted and I was terrified and … sick to my stomach.”
“The second person you sensed was ill?”
She made an uncertain gesture. “You scared me, and all I could think about was getting away, throwing up, and soaking my feet. They were killing me.”
He glanced at her toes. “Could one of these people be hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” She frowned as she tried to recall the emotions that had overrun her mind. “The first surge was really strong. Almost primitive. As if men and sex are all she thinks about. The second wave was the complete opposite. She wants to get away. Be left alone with …” The thought dissipated, and she shook her head.
“Did either of the women think about what they were doing on the island?”
“Sex Kitten just wanted you, or, for that matter, any guy with a pulse.” She frowned as a fragment of imagery came back to her. “The girl who was sick and scared, she wasn’t reacting to only you.” She looked back at the villa. “It’s this place. Seeing it was what made her feel sick. Something inside.” She grabbed his hand. “Come with me.”
Charlie led him through the master suite and down the hall, but stopped just outside the door to the assessment room. She looked in at the empty table, and then released his hand, walking slowly toward the end of the upholstered seat. She reached under and pulled up one stirrup and then the other, curling her fingers over the metal supports.
“Charlotte?”
“She was in here,” she murmured as the images coalesced in her mind. “On the table, staring at the ceiling. An older man was giving her a pelvic exam. She was in so much pain.” She pushed the table toward the wall, and glanced down. Dark reddish brown stains colored the grout between the white tiles in a two-foot area. “Oh, God. I think that’s her blood.”
Samuel knelt down and touched the grout. “There was a pool of it.” He made a circling gesture. “About three feet in diameter. The doctor mopped it up.”
Charlie stepped back. “She was hemorrhaging. Maybe from an illegal abortion.” She winced as the thought streams outside her barriers became more intense and focused. “Sam? They’re here.”
“Here on the island?”
“No.” She covered her face with her hands, pressing her fingers against her eyelids before she dropped her arms. “They’re standing right outside the front door.”
Samuel gave her a narrow look. “How do you know that?”
“I can feel them.” She showed him the goose bumps covering her forearms.
He rested a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’d stay here while I go down to see what they want?”
“Not a chance.”
Charlie saw the torches through the downstairs windows, but when she stepped outside with Samuel the group waiting for them shocked her into silence. Twelve men and women, dressed in ragged clothing, stood in two rows: the men in the front and the women behind them. She saw blondes, brunettes, an
d several redheads, with skin tones ranging from alabaster to ebony. From what she could make out of their features they were all of multiracial lineage, although it was obvious they all shared some Caucasian characteristics.
Not one of them, however, appeared to be Mexican.
One of the men with the darkest skin stepped forward and touched his chest as he said, “Colotl.” He made a broad gesture encompassing the others. “Amigos.” He pointed to Charlie and then Samuel. “¿Ustedes?”
“I’m Samuel Taske,” Sam said. “This is Charlotte Marena. Do any of you speak English?”
Colotl uttered a few words to one of the other men before he spoke to Samuel again. “¿Curandero?”
“He’s asking if you’re a healer.” To Colotl she said, “Yo soy médica. ¿Alguien está lastimada?”
The red-haired woman standing behind Colotl murmured something to him, and he raised both hands palms out toward Charlie before speaking to Samuel again. “¿Manos curativas?” He pointed at Samuel’s hands.
“Charlotte,” Sam said softly, “I believe they know about my newfound ability.”
“Whether they do or not, we shouldn’t volunteer anything just yet.” She looked at Colotl, asking him the same question as before while pressing a hand to her chest and mimicking a pained expression. She then repeated the question in English. “Is someone hurt?”
“Hurt.” Colotl glanced at the other men. “No.”
She recalled what the apparition in the house had said. “¿Pici está contigo?”
Colotl beckoned to the smallest of the women, who shuffled over to stand beside him.
“That’s what our visitor meant by ‘woman doctor.’ ” Charlie’s eyes shifted to the high, swollen mound of her abdomen. “A doctor for a woman. A pregnant woman.” She moved toward Pici, who cringed and huddled against Colotl. “It’s all right, sweetie. I won’t hurt you.”
“Momento.” Colotl turned his head and spoke to the others, and one by one the other women began to step forward into the light from the torches.
“My God,” Samuel muttered under his breath.
Charlie looked down the row of females, unwilling to accept what she was seeing but unable to deny the evidence. “Sam, we’re not here to be displayed.” Of the twelve women, eleven were in various stages of advanced pregnancy. “We’re livestock.”
PART THREE
Night of Tears
Chapter 12
September 29, 1978
Mexico City, Mexico
“You’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 wou
ld 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.”