“They’re beautiful but I’m not up for an ear piercing this morning,” she said, smiling to soften her refusal.
“I have a bracelet with just such stones.” The old woman took a dusty cigar box from beneath her makeshift wooden counter. She opened the box and there on a scrap of thin black velvet, lay a hammered silver cuff, studded with three pale green crystals.
“How much?” Kira asked, rationalizing the purchase as a keepsake. Something from her past that would remind her of Bastian.
“Only ten dollars.”
When Kira nodded, the woman didn’t bother with a sack but placed it on her wrist.
The old woman smiled and nodded, already looking for her next customer before Kira had paid her.
She realized that she’d spent more time with the old woman than she should have and now someone might remember her. She sauntered away slowly enough that no one should take notice. She still had a few more purchases to make before she checked out old Juan.
Another change of clothes, another personality that would barely be noticed or remembered. She skirted the open air plaza, found a crate-filled alley that supplied enough cover to hurriedly slip into her second disguise for the day.
The jeans were baggy, the striped T-shirt and ball cap so nondescript that she blended into the native crowd. The used black sneakers were a necessity and she finished off her disguise with her previously purchased sunglasses. No one seeing her now would remember what she looked like before. Maybe she was being too cautious but she wasn’t taking any chances. She slipped into a crowd of tourists and paid her entrance fee an hour before the lunch closing.
The docent was tall, her slim figure regal in a simple white dress that was more than enough to set her apart from the middle-aged tour group she led. Her honey-colored skin would have blended into her honey-colored hair if not for the blonde and blonder streaks. Her slanted green eyes, the color of the quartz in Kira’s bracelet were striking and a little unnerving. Kira felt her gaze as she pretended to study the small figure of an Aztec Warrior wearing a jaguar skin, encased in glass, atop a pedestal.
The rest of the group was transfixed by a replica of a stone chacmool with artfully applied dark red paint that resembled old bloodstains. Kira found it hard to look at. She felt the air currents around her swirl and darken to the color of the paint. The hair on the back of her neck fluttered.
“You don’t care for the chacmool?” The docent smiled. “Neither do I, but it draws the tourists and they buy more postcards of it than any other artifact in the place.”
Kira smiled back. “Just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“Lily Calderon,” she said, extending an elegant, manicured hand. So much for needing a password.
Juan’s daughter. The one Bastian had had so much trouble explaining. “Cristina Dellasandro.” She offered her hand and her mother’s name, the only one that came to mind. Lily’s grip was firm and Kira was instantly aware of her grubby nails and her sloppy disguise.
“I see you’ve met Maya,” she said, eyeing the hammered cuff that Kira had neglected to take off. “She’s one of the city’s treasures.”
“She’s…very good,” Kira remarked inanely, fighting the urge to cover the bracelet with her other hand. Nothing noticeable, nothing memorable. She was making so many mistakes.
“Have you been interested in Mesoamerican culture for very long, Miss Dellasandro?”
She nodded casually. “About ten years. Much of what I’ve learned and believed came from a renegade archaeologist’s claims. I’ve been trying to find someone to corroborate some of his theories. I thought perhaps the curator might answer a few questions for me.”
“My father is a very busy man, Miss Dellasandro,” she said, a smile softening her remark.
Kira fished the tattered envelope with Bastian’s message from her bag. “Perhaps if you gave him this,” she said, extending the folded envelope, which Lily proceeded to open.
She looked up, her smile dying before she’d refolded the note and concealed it in her closed hand. “Lag behind the others when we close for lunch and I will come for you.”
She wasn’t curt but her demeanor had changed since Kira had witnessed the distress behind her shock. Her back was ramrod straight as she walked past a group of tourists who were loudly discussing lunch plans as if they were invading a small country. Which, technically she supposed they were. Lily disappeared behind a door marked “Museum Personnel Only”.
Kira’s knees almost buckled and she broke out in a cold sweat. She was going to meet Juan, give him Bastian’s message and then what? Bastian had promised her that she’d be safe, had said they didn’t really have any choice but to trust the Guardian. As much as he wanted to avert a war, her more immediate concern was rescuing him from his current condition.
Her stomach clenched as she watched the last tourist walk out the door and heard the latch click firmly behind him. Lily Calderon walked toward her, no trace of a smile left on her pretty face. A face, she realized now, that Bastian probably knew very well.
She fell in step behind Lily and followed her through the “Personnel Only” door and down a cool, dim hallway, then through another door that she opened without knocking. Lily apparently got her coloring from her father and it was just as striking against his mane of white hair. When they entered, he rose—tall and elegant in a charcoal pinstripe suit—from behind a plain wooden desk. He didn’t offer his hand and his voice was clipped, edgy.
“Miss Dellasandro, would you mind telling me how you came by this note?”
“I wrote it but Bastian…Sebastian more or less dictated it.”
Lily, who was standing beside her father, snapped to attention at the name. “What do you mean he dictated it? Where is he? Why didn’t he come himself?” she demanded in a voice that seemed to whoosh from her chest as if she’d been waiting hours to speak.
Kira glanced from Lily to Juan. No allies here. “He would have drawn too much attention in his present form.” Juan got a little paler but Lily looked faint. “I think you’d both better sit down,” Kira suggested.
Lily’s lips thinned. “I think you’d better start talking—fast,” she snapped, but her father held up his hand. She shot him a disbelieving glance, folded her arms and started to pace.
“Sebastian saw a rogue priest by the name of Fontaine sacrifice a member of the Brotherhood and has been trying to reach you so that you can warn the Council that a war is coming. Fontaine wants to usher in the prophesized Second Age of Jaguar.”
Kira returned her attention to Juan. “Sebastian hasn’t been able to change from his Jaguar Warrior since we escaped Alonzo Alvarez’s compound three days ago. They were drugging us both and they told me that the longer he stays a Warrior the harder it would be for him to change into any of his other natures. At some point it will become impossible. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Juan snapped. Kira barely stopped herself from flinching. “Why were you being held?”
“They wanted to produce a halfling they need for the prophecy.”
Lily gasped, stricken. “They’re hoping to produce the Chosen One? It’s forbidden,” she screamed, but then she seemed to realize what she’d said. She shot a stricken glance at her father but he’d been holding Kira’s gaze since she’d started explaining.
“Does he know?” Juan asked.
“Know what?” Lily demanded and Kira did flinch.
“I’m all he had to help him get you the message that the Council has been compromised. Their intelligence was all wrong. The Brotherhood is probably coming for them if they haven’t already. And if they come for them, they’ll be coming for you.”
“Are you sure the Brotherhood knows what Fontaine is up to?”
“I don’t know if Alvarez played Fontaine or Fontaine played Alvarez but there was no honor among thieves that I could tell. The Brotherhood attacked the compound in the early morning, three days ago. Fontaine’s mercenaries jumped out of the jungle and yelled ‘Surprise’.
Sebastian rescued me and we’ve been trying to get here to warn the Council.” And you don’t need to know any more.
“Were they successful?” Lily blurted and her father closed his eyes. “Did they breed you? Were you with Sebastian?” she asked, tightly.
She hesitated for the fraction of an instant and it was enough to damn her. Lily looked horrified.
“That’s enough, Lily,” Juan whispered, looking older than he had minutes before.
“Why?” she demanded. “He takes a human and suddenly it’s fine. No consequences, no penalties. If you were going to let him have a human you could have done it years ago and spared us all a lot of heartache!”
The implication of Lily’s impassioned accusation sat on Kira’s chest like a lead weight. Sebastian and Lily?
“No one has been spared heartache, Lily. Not even the one who sits before you now.” He glanced at his daughter and Kira read myriad emotions on Juan’s face—contrition, sorrow, pain. “She isn’t human, Lily. Not entirely.”
Kira, practiced at hiding her emotions, put herself in the place of the observer. One part of her brain knew what was happening. The other part was dissecting like mad, trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there.
Lily seethed, pacing, so angry she looked as if she might implode. Of the two she would lunge first. Juan might fake her out but with Lily she expected a knife to come zinging straight for her heart.
“You ruined him, didn’t you?” There were tears in her defeated voice. Kira would have preferred the knife. It would be quicker. “You’ve ruined us all.”
Juan shook his head. “I told you long ago that Sebastian’s destiny did not lie with you.” He glanced up. “But he is entwined in hers.”
It took a moment to register what he’d said. It was beginning to sound as if Fontaine wasn’t quite as crazy as she’d thought and that did not bode well. One thing at a time.
“I need to know two things,” Kira said evenly. “Can you warn the Council in time and can you help Sebastian before he reverts to a primitive Warrior that no one can reach?”
“I can warn the Council but I will need to know where Sebastian is.”
“I’ll take you now.” The sooner she could get help for Bastian the better. Then she’d decide if she wanted to be part of this prophecy business or run like hell.
“No!” Lily interjected. She turned to her father. “We can stop this now. Get in touch with the Council. You took an oath.”
More oaths. This just keeps getting better and better.
“That she’s made it this far tells me that Sebastian ignored his duty, fulfilling the second part of the prophecy.”
Kira glanced from Lily to Juan, waiting for the other shoe to drop while they watched her expectantly. “I assume the first part was my being born in the first place. Is there a third part?” You never knew what information could be traded as currency.
Juan’s smile was more of a grimace. “You will heal an enemy.”
She laughed, more out of desperation than anything else. “Which one?”
* * * * *
The snick of the door locking behind her as Lily turned the key from the other side sent a shiver up Kira’s spine. It reminded her of every day of her life that she could remember until she was fourteen. Locking her in was supposed to be for her own protection while Juan alerted the Council and made preparations. Whatever the hell that meant.
Her only real protection was that Juan wanted to get to Bastian and Kira was his only guide. Bastian had made sure of that. It had to mean something. She knew she shouldn’t rely on his current actions. They might be fueled by the combination of the drugs Alvarez had given him and his true Jaguar Warrior nature.
Maybe it was just the drugs on her part too. She couldn’t ever remember wanting anyone this much. She walked around in a permanent state of arousal—wet, her pussy dampening, clenching at the thought of him buried deep inside of her. But then, her desire had never been this focused before. She’d thought being away from him would lessen the pull. Even now she could close her eyes and see him. The grim slash of his mouth, his hands fisted so that he didn’t grab her and take her against the nearest wall, fuck her until they both ended in a sweaty heap.
She needed to feel his arms holding her in the night, his breath on her neck. She pressed her thighs together and it didn’t help. It only reminded her of what she couldn’t have. She wanted to scream.
She needed to focus on something that would bring her closer to what she wanted, needed.
The Chosen One. She’d laugh if she weren’t so frustrated. She’d assumed a halfling leading the Jaguar civilization into their Second Age had only been Fontaine’s fanatical dream. But if there weren’t something really scary about the notion, the Jaguar Council would never have ordered every halfling killed.
She was tired and the adrenaline high that had gotten her through most of the day was waning fast. She looked around the room and noticed the butter-colored leather pillow paneling that covered the walls of the room. It was lovely but it also served to soundproof the room. That could be to protect the inhabitant but it would serve just as well to quiet any cry for help. She had to calm down. Focus.
The small bathroom was padded also and supplied with toiletries and vanilla bath salts and soap. There was a built-in shower and bath combination behind a thick glass door.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a hot bath and climbed into a soft bed. She might get the bath but she had no idea how long it would take for them to do whatever it was they were going to do. She had absolutely no idea what alerting the Council entailed but she hoped it was fast.
Dropping her string shopping bag into the overstuffed chair by the bed, she proceeded to fill the tub with hot water and bath salts. She stripped off her clothes and slid beneath the bubbles.
It was the last thing she remembered doing before opening her eyes to find Lily Calderon, dressed in khaki shirt and slacks, sitting on the closed toilet like a queen on a throne. She would have laughed at her unintended pun if it hadn’t been for the agitation drawing Lily’s beautiful face into a frown.
“It’s time to go,” Lily said, standing and yanking a towel from the shelf opposite her.
Kira blinked and glanced at her pruney fingers. “How long have I been in here?”
“A couple of hours,” she said, flipping the towel at her. “We’re not waiting until daybreak to leave.”
Kira had given up modesty years before and swiped the towel over her body and stepped from the tub. Someone had dug her filthy jeans and shirt out of her string shopping bag. They were freshly laundered and folded on the bed. She murmured her thanks, dressed hurriedly and slipped her feet into sneakers while Lily stood at the door.
“Has the Council been breached? Are we running?”
“Come with me,” was all Lily said. Kira grabbed her string bag and didn’t look back.
Juan was waiting in a black SUV in the quiet alley behind the museum, engine running, his pinstripe suit replaced by a masculine version of Lily’s getup. Kira sat in the backseat while Lily sat up front with her father.
Kira set her bag beside her, wedging it between her and a rucksack full of what looked to be digging tools.
“Are you planning on burying us? I sort of got the idea you had to burn up the evidence.”
“The tools are merely a cover,” Juan assured her. “Lily and I often go excavating and since it’s Sunday and the museum is closed, it will do. You’re an archaeology student from—”
“Chicago. Do you want to tell me what’s happened, now?”
“Two members of the Council have already been butchered, the other six are regrouping,” he said.
They’d been too late. “I’m sorry,” she said, and felt even more ineffectual when Juan glanced at the rearview mirror, his mouth set in a grim line.
“It might have saved both your lives, for the time being.” He came to the edge of town and stopped at the crossroads. “Which way?”
“Take a left until the road cuts north. It ends in about a mile or so and after that you’ll need me to find him.”
* * * * *
Sebastian smelled Kira before he heard her. Even without the slight overlay of vanilla, her scent drew him, surrounded him. She wasn’t alone. He’d expected Juan but Lily was a shock. He drew himself up and waited behind the cover of a small vine-and-flower-veiled tree.
He knew when Kira scented him. He felt her smile curve almost as if his lips were touching hers. Lily looked up a few seconds later, her eyes narrowing as she looked around. Sebastian stepped from the jungle and only Kira smiled.
Juan look resigned but Lily had to cover her shock. It had been twelve years and she was more beautiful, more mature. He watched the realization of what he really was, take her. It only took a fraction of a second and in that same instant he swept his gaze back to Kira.
For the first time since he’d seen her wake in the cave behind the falls, Kira’s face was expressionless.
“I’ve got bad news and confusing news,” she said, tersely. “Maybe I should just let Juan explain.”
“Hello, Sebastian,” Juan said with all the warmth of a grieving father.
Sebastian nodded since he didn’t want to chance talking around his canines and getting his words twisted.
“Why don’t you say something,” Lily demanded, her lips a grim line he hadn’t seen since they’d parted twelve years before.
Kira spun around and Lily took a step back. “Why do you think? I told you that he needed help. The longer he stays like this the worse it will get, so will you two just tell him whatever you need to tell him and drop the other shoe so that we know where we stand?”
“We think the Brotherhood killed Ramon and Sylvia. Both bodies had silver crosses burned into them, but they weren’t skinned until after they were dead. And that’s not the Brotherhood way,” Juan said. “The rest of the Council is scattered but we managed to reach four out of the remaining six. They’ve decided to let the prophecy stand this time, but it’s provisional.”
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