Tony was the only clue she had to her past, her only possibility of finding out what happened all those years ago.
The only man she loved.
In the face of his death, she could admit it, if only to herself. It didn’t matter if he was married and she could never tell him, didn’t matter if he couldn’t return her feelings and there could never be anything more between them. He was alive.
He shifted in her grasp. A flush crept into his skin, and sweat mingled with the blood on his forehead. He struggled to sit.
“Tony, what are you—”
“Lie down,” Mr. Lynch ordered.
“Burning up,” Tony said. “Get me—”
“Before you fall the rest the way,” Mr. Lynch finished.
“—out of the sun.” Tony sat, then pulled his feet beneath him and yanked his wrist out of Violet’s hand. With a grunt, he rolled over and settled his foot onto a protruding stone, then began to climb back up the pyramid.
Mr. Lynch yelled again to stay put, but Tony kept climbing. All Violet could do was watch in slack-jawed astonishment and scoot out of Mr. Lynch’s way as he scrambled after Tony.
Something amazing had happened. A miracle. People didn’t get conked on the head and almost die—then recover and stand up a few minutes later. She could have sworn Tony’s pulse had stopped. She lifted the hand she’d held onto him with, and waggled her fingers. Something had passed between them. Something incredible, in the midst of that horrible dizzy spell, the worst one she’d ever had. Something—
No. It was nothing. Just coincidence. Odd things sometimes happened with head injuries. Maybe Tony’s wasn’t as bad as it had seemed, and he hadn’t been as close to death as she thought. She’d just lost the pulse for a minute. The tingle, the dizziness was just a worse occurrence of the occasional vertigo she’d suffered as long as she could remember.
She clambered up the pyramid after him.
Above, Tony pulled himself over the edge of the platform, then rose on wobbly legs. Violet scrambled to reach him. He swayed, stabilized, then stumbled the few steps into the stone building. Outside, Mr. Lynch yelled at someone on the ground to go for medical help.
Tony was leaning against the wall to one side of the doorway when Violet stepped inside the structure. “Good heavens, what on earth are you doing?”
“Had to...” He panted. “...get out of that sun.”
“You should sit down. The medics will be here soon.”
“I’m okay.” His voice was stronger.
“You were knocked unconscious. You’re—”
“I’m fine.” Strong enough now to stand without support, he patted the stone wall and regarded it with a studious gaze.
“Wonder what it was like back then?” the woman from Finance mused from somewhere behind Violet.
The ancient Mayans were the least of Violet’s concerns. What was keeping the paramedics? The tour guide had assured them it wouldn’t be long—
“Violet?” Mr. Lynch yelled from outside.
She leaned out. “What did you say, sir?”
An ambulance pulled up to the foot of the pyramid as Lynch hoisted himself over the ledge. He stood and brushed himself off. “Started to slide a bit there— what’s he doing?”
“Tony?” Violet turned to go back inside when the vertigo came back, making her lurch to one side. No... Not again! She groped at the wall, anything to save herself from a mishap like Tony’s.
The dizziness subsided. She gripped the edge of the doorway and walked inside.
No one was there. “Tony?”
He must’ve gone through the temple. She navigated the short corridor and emerged on the pyramid’s opposite side.
No Tony.
Tourists milled around on the ground, pointing upward and shielding their eyes. The others in the LCT group clustered behind Mr. Lynch, wearing expressions of puzzled concern. Violet walked along the building to a third side of the structure. “Tony?”
“Violet!”
She jumped. Mr. Lynch exited the doorway behind her “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I stepped out, and when I came back in, he was gone.”
“The paramedics are here. Check over there, I’ll look here... he might’ve fallen again.”
She searched the platform, went through the transverse passage of the temple, then walked around to the first side, where Tony had fallen. Seconds later Mr. Lynch emerged from the opposite side. “He’s not—”
“Sir?” The paramedics drew up beside Mr. Lynch. “Where is the injured person?”
“He went in there for a minute, and then...” He lifted his hands, palms up.
“It’s almost like he... disappeared,” Violet said. “Vanished.”
Another dizzy spell. Tony pressed his hands against the side of the temple. Thank God he was inside and couldn’t fall again. For a second he thought he was going to puke, then the vertigo passed.
He slumped against the wall for a minute, the stone cool against his cheek and palms, then pushed himself off. The simple action took an incredible effort. Man, was he tired. Maybe he hadn’t died there on the slope, but something sure as hell was wrong. Good thing the medics were on their way.
He took three steps to the temple’s doorway, holding himself up with a hand on the wall. With the uncertainty of a man twice his thirty-six years, he wobbled and moved, but this time it was because of weakness and the strange, intense fatigue. God, he felt like hell. “Violet?”
No answer. “Keith?” Tony wrenched himself through the door. “Charlie?”
The platform was empty. Where had everyone gone?
He clutched the edge of the portal, panting. Man, did his head hurt. Like someone had swung a sledgehammer into his forehead. He slowly pulled himself around to the outside of the temple, more bumps and bruises announcing their presence with each move.
He leaned against the doorway. Even that took an incredible amount of strength. What the hell had happened to him?
His fall explained his pounding head and bruises. He’d thought he was dead for sure. But then someone had latched onto him and pulled him away from that light—
Bethany. He’d seen her. Then something pulled him back, like it wasn’t his time to go after all.
But the weird tingly feeling that had come from the person’s hands (Violet’s?) and the dizziness... He’d watched a TV show about near-death experiences one time, but no one had mentioned anything like that.
Freaky things could happen with a brain injury. Like a guy on the news last summer who got hit in the head with a baseball, seemed fine other than a bad headache, then dropped dead six hours later. Maybe he was suffering hallucinations.
“Violet!” His voice was weak. He collapsed against the little building. The cry of a bird overhead made him look up.
Black and red painted stripes circled the top edge of the temple. The air in his lungs froze.
Those stripes hadn’t been there before.
His gaze traveled down the unblemished staircase leading down the pyramid’s clean, limestone side, clear even without his glasses.
No way. He was seeing things. That staircase had been ravaged beyond use. Maybe he’d emerged on one of the two restored sides. Sweat rolled down his face, its moistness cool in the breeze.
Someone shouted from below. He looked at the ground. Big mistake. He flattened himself against the wall and concentrated on its solid surface. Why had he let Charlie goad him into coming up here? Then a worse thought hit him. What if, for some reason, the medics couldn’t come after him? Maybe they were already out on another call. Somehow he’d have to climb down those ninety-one steps by himself.
Steps that hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t gone more than a few strides into the temple, and he’d come out the same side. The sun was in the same position it had been before he went inside. But below, trees and vegetation blanketed what had been a meadow. A moss-darkened, stone roof topped the rows of columns he’d seen.
Tiny, brown
blurs moved toward the pyramid. More yelling.
A hallucination. It had to be. Tony blinked twice, hard. Wake up!
Four people rushed up the steps, shouting angry-sounding words he couldn’t understand. Blurs of brown coalesced into other colors. Red. Yellow. Spots of blue and green. On long tunics, not the T-shirts and shorts the people should have been wearing.
He’d been knocked out. Come to for just long enough to crawl back to the pyramid’s summit. Those voices were really Violet, Keith, others in their group. Maybe the paramedics.
When the men reached him, two grabbed his arms and yanked him off the wall. Their guttural words sounded nothing like the Spanish he’d grown used to hearing the past few days.
He jerked his arm away. “Hey!” He twisted in their grasp, but their grip tightened, and the other two moved forward. “Let me go!” He tried to fling his body to the wall behind him.
The men’s harsh shrieks cracked in his ears. One man slapped him. Hard. His face stung.
“Hey—” Disbelief locked his jaw as the other two men grabbed his wrists and ankles, their sharp fingernails digging into his skin. Tony bucked against them. “Get off me!”
A man wearing a beaded necklace and a dark, fur cape loomed before him. He growled something threatening, then gripped a wad of Tony’s shirt as if trying to tear Tony’s heart out. Agitated jabbers ensued among the four men. The leader barked something incomprehensible and released Tony’s shirt with a jerk. The hands on Tony’s limbs tightened, and the men lifted him.
Dreaming, Tony reminded himself. The medics were probably loading him into the ambulance. But did they have to be so rough? And why couldn’t he wake up?
He must’ve been injured pretty badly. His head no longer hurt, but maybe unconsciousness was his body’s way of protecting itself. Relax. Make the medics’ job easier.
The men half-dragged, half-led him around the corner of the pyramid to a side of the temple he hadn’t seen. Huge, twin snake statues flanked the triple entryway. Did their menacing, fang-filled jaws hint at his own fate? Before his mind could process an answer, the men jerked him upright.
He hung in the men’s grasp, too weak to resist further. The man in the animal pelt—probably a priest, the way the others deferred to him—walked around Tony, studied him, pawed at his clothing. He stopped, faced Tony, and drew a stone knife from a sheath at his waist. Murmurings rose from below.
The man gripped the knife in his fist with the blade pointing down. Fear crawled down Tony’s throat as the man brought the knife closer, until the sharp, stone tip touched the placket of Tony’s shirt. He wet his lips. It’s the paramedics. Doctors.
The man drew the knife down, slicing Tony’s shirt to the hem. The blade barely touched his skin. What the—? The two men beside him ripped the shirt off his back and tossed it to the floor, then the leader began to saw at the waistband of Tony’s shorts.
The medics were cutting his clothing off. Looking for—or treating—other injuries. Injuries serious enough his mind had blocked them out in his semi-dream state.
A cut down each leg brought his shorts down. Next, the men lifted his feet and yanked his shoes off, then his socks, twisting an already-sore ankle. Shouts and catcalls from the ground told Tony a crowd had gathered. No, a two-way radio in the ambulance, the noise of traffic as it hurtled toward the hospital.
The priest peered at Tony’s briefs with a cocked head and squinting eyes. Despite his rationalizations, Tony’s groin clenched at the unpleasant sensation of reliving the old standing-in-the-school-hallway-in-your-underwear dream. The man with the knife growled something, then drew the blade up one of Tony’s hips, then the other. Tony’s underwear fell away, then the men dragged him to the edge of the platform.
A breeze caressed his naked body, oddly cold despite the blazing sun. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. He must be messed up really bad. Tony shut his eyes to stop the queasiness that rose in his belly when he saw how far away the ground was. His captors raised his arms, holding him upright as if presenting him to the multitude. A roar rose from the crowd.
Just a dream. And even if it wasn’t, he was too tired and in too much pain to give a damn. Just let me lie down.
To his surprise, the dream granted his wish. The men yanked him through the portal and tossed him onto a raised, stone slab. Three of them held him down, then a strap of some kind bit into his right wrist as a man lashed it to the cool, hard stone.
The medics were tying him to a body board. At least he was out of the baking sun. He didn’t struggle as the men bound each of his other limbs.
How badly had he been hurt? And when would they reach the hospital?
The thumping behind his brain grew louder. Drums. His headache returned, thumping in time.
What was happening? Maybe he was in surgery, and the doctors had a radio playing. Something with a heavy beat. It was filtering into his dream, and the yelling was conversation in the O.R.
The drums and shouting stopped.
The man in the fur cape leaned over him, silhouetted in the three sunlit squares of the doorway. Strings of shells and stone beads rattled in his dark hair as he swayed from side to side and chanted. The four other men loomed behind him and did the same.
What were they doing in that operating room Tony couldn’t see? What if he was having major surgery? He’d read about patients who’d been partly knocked out, enough they couldn’t move or speak, but could feel every cut, every stitch. He felt each touch of the men’s hands on his body, the swish of air as the priest’s headdress swirled around.
The chanting stopped. The other men backed out of Tony’s view. The priest thrust his arms skyward as he addressed the people below.
Sweat ran down the sides of Tony’s forehead despite the shade. This had to be the most vivid dream he’d ever had. He opened his mouth to shout, speak, make any kind of noise but his throat had gone dry and nothing came out.
The leader fell silent and lowered his arms. Two of the other men reappeared at his sides. On the edge of Tony’s vision, one raised a weapon that looked like a battle-axe. Dark stains—blood—flecked the stone blade. The tip of Tony’s tongue pressed the back of his teeth.
They were going to behead him.
Wake up—wake up—wake up! Tony commanded himself but his body again refused to obey. You’re dreaming, he reminded himself, but he was getting harder to convince. He shut his mouth, willing the saliva to flow so he could tell them he wasn’t knocked out.
Trepidation crawled over his skin like a colony of insects as the leader uttered a word, then held something above Tony’s sternum. The flint dagger.
This was no dream. It was the worst fucking nightmare he’d ever had.
Tony squeezed his eyes shut. Wakeupwakeupwakeup!
He opened his eyes.
The man in the animal skin held the dagger high above Tony, then in a single swift motion, plunged it into his chest.
The crack of bones. Blinding pain. Blood spurting everywhere. Screams. His own. Someone jammed a hand into Tony’s chest, groping around. A high, keening wail. Himself.
Then merciful darkness.
TONY VAGUELY REMEMBERED THE NURSE checking on him, giving him painkillers. An older man in a lab coat asked him questions like what was his name, and please count to ten, and how many fingers was he holding up.
“What is your day of birth?” the doctor asked in accented English.
“May first.” Scratching sounds came from the nurse scribbling on a clipboard. “In Dayton, Ohio,” Tony added. Maybe it would give him some kind of extra credit and make them leave him alone. Damn, he was tired.
Someone shouted from the hallway and they hurried away.
Tony’s neck itched.
He started to lift his arm to scratch, but it was so heavy, he couldn’t. He tried again. Shards of pain burst through his ribcage, like a dagger slicing through skin and muscle. The vise-grip on his brain tightened. He clenched his jaw and forced the leaden arm up farther.
&
nbsp; A raised ridge marred the smooth skin of his neck. As he ran his fingertips over it, images burst through his mind (huge stone axe... Mayan priest... flint knife) in rapid succession.
His arm fell to the bed. What the hell was that? Beneath his ribs, pressure warred with the lightness one feels on a roller coaster the second before it plunges over the hill. “Excuse me?” he croaked.
The nurse returned to his bed. “Yes, Señior Solomon?”
“What’s this... my neck?”
Her face twisted in puzzlement. “You don’t know? Look like old injury to me.”
Old injury? What was she talking about? “But I’ve never— what happened to me? What’s wrong—”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You had bad fall, bruised ribs. Doctors say you are lucky man.”
No wonder it felt like he’d been stomped on. “But why am I so tired?” And weak? And (huge stone axe, knife ripping into him) where had that come from?
“The pain meds. You feel better soon. Relax.”
So the ancient Mayans had to have been a dream. But not all of it. He’d been injured. “But what happened to me?”
“You don’t remember?”
He gripped the cool, cotton sheet, his hands damp. Panic speared his chest and spread until tendrils of ice lanced through his body. He did remember. But which of the images racing through his mind were memories, and which were only dreams?
He came to for brief periods throughout the next several days. Mostly he slept, his body so tired it was a monumental effort to lift his arm and scratch his nose. Keith had brought him his glasses, thank God. Dora visited several times. One time Tony woke and saw her and Charlie sitting in a pair of chairs pushed together, Charlie’s hand resting on her knee.
Violet had come, too, during one of Tony’s more lucid moments. She’d managed to find an English language bookstore, and had brought him a crime novel by one of his favorite authors. And when she’d realized his head still hurt, she’d volunteered to read to him. He’d still been in a mental fog, couldn’t remember much except her low, throaty voice and her red-lipsticked lips forming the words as she read.
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 2