Power: Arca Book 3

by Karen Diem

  Probably not, Wyn sent. Not at all. You just said you’d leave her in a room to starve.

  “Since you can’t defend yourself, it makes sense to put you in a place where the local wildlife can’t eat you until someone can come back for you. If the only other option was letting Pretorius or Tiffany kill you, it’d be the sane choice to make,” Zita explained, frowning. She shouldn’t jump to conclusions about people so fast.

  Pot, meet kettle. Andy’s mental voice was dry.

  Zita frowned at him. What?

  Amusement sang over the party line from both her friends. Never mind, Andy sent.

  “Tiffany? Vaudeville and Halja were the only other women.” Confusion and concern warred on the professor’s face.

  We know who Halja is. Vaudeville must be Trixie. I wonder why she chose that name? Wyn mused.

  “Tiffany is Halja’s real name,” Jerome said, taking pity on Santos.

  The professor stretched and flashed a smile at him. “Ah, thank you. It’s good to be out of there. Let me take a quick gander at these things… if only I had more of my equipment!” She hurried over and began reviewing the tombstones.

  A line appeared between Wyn’s brows. “We have a minute, but we need to catch up to the people who left you here. We can’t let them take the gem out of the area.” Despite her words, her face tilted upward, and her lips moved as she stared at something only she could see.

  She’s either studying the spell on this place again or watching the clouds. Oye, that one resembles a stack of pancakes. Food would be nice, Zita thought.

  Santos glanced up from the tombstone she was examining, light reflecting off her glasses. “While I abhor artifact theft as much as the next, I’m not in a hurry to meet up with any of them again.”

  “You don’t understand,” Wyn said, her gaze still skyward, a hand tugging at the pale strands of her illusory hair. “The spell that sustains this land is collapsing because the Heart—the power source—isn’t where it should be. In the best case scenario, the boundaries will dissolve when they cross back into the normal world and all the creatures inside will be ejected into our world. In the worst-case scenario, we all die immediately after they cross or are imprisoned here forever.”

  The professor jolted into motion. “Prior to this trip, I would’ve scoffed at the idea of magic, but after this place… I don’t think I’ll be writing anything I’ve seen for fear of becoming a laughingstock in a straightjacket.” She tapped a tombstone. “This is strange.”

  “More bad news?” Jerome asked, twitching uncomfortably.

  Somber, Santos traced the letters on the last monument with her fingers. “These graves would be a major find even without the cave murals, dinosaurs, or mummies. They’re for everyone on the last missing expedition, except two. Three of the known fifteen people with powers from that decade went on this expedition. Alchemist died here. Clockwork flew off into space sometime later, so we know he survived. While Joe Paladin was never confirmed killed, his name is missing.”

  Crossing his beefy arms, Jerome said, “That count’s off. We know someone who said four people escaped, including his mom and Paladin.”

  “Locals tend to get hired as guides, porters, and guards, and they wouldn’t be on an official list. At least one of the survivors was from a nearby village, so the expedition probably had others from around here. That might account for it,” Zita said.

  Wyn raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t they just hire a guide to help them find a place like this and skip the others given that they’d want to keep an undisturbed site secret from looters?”

  With a snort and an internal wince at the memories it evoked, Zita vetoed that. “You think fancy archeologists carry their own crap?”

  The professor shot Zita a glare, pursing her lips. “Unfortunately, true. Proper scientific equipment and excavation gear can be quite bulky.”

  “You sure you’re not a paleontologist or something?” Jerome said in an aside to Zita.

  Zita shook her head, bile burning her throat at the memory of just how willing one scientist had been to abandon his local guides to thugs, and how her friend had died as a result.

  Santos tapped her fingers, chipped fingernail paint and all, against a stone. “That’s all beside the point. Your friend must be mistaken. The only female member of the expedition, Patricia Wanjiku Mwangi, is listed right here.” She patted the monument she stood beside. Unlike most of the graves, only a few flowers decorated the grass by the stone.

  “Mwangi?” Jerome said. “Maybe his aunt? The doc couldn’t be more than his early thirties, tops, so his mom had to have survived.”

  “Who did your friend say escaped?” asked the professor.

  “Joe Paladin, his mother, a local boy, and a fourth person he didn’t specify,” Wyn said.

  Her eyelids lowering, Santos scanned all the gravestones again. “Except for the metahuman Clockwork, all the scientists recorded on the expedition have headstones.”

  While they debated, Zita’s eyes rested on the creepy statues, and she finally figured out what bothered her most about them and the surrounding graves. “Guys? If these are the remains of the people from that expedition, where did they get marble headstones from? And more than that… The statues have guns and sunglasses. I’m not all up on that history stuff, but the conquistadores did not wear shades. How and why would they bring that stuff up here?” She gestured toward it, remembering Andy’s aversion to pointing at the last minute and ending with a weird wave instead, as if she were a beauty contestant.

  The professor straightened her glasses. “While he never did it that anyone knows about, it was hypothesized that the Alchemist could turn people to stone. We can’t ask him since he died on the expedition. The headstone next to your friend’s aunt appears to be his or at least that of the man suspected of being him.”

  Zita rubbed the top of her head. “We are so chingado. If the temple is right for the supposed era of the legend of the dude who returned the rock here—”

  Pushing her glasses up on her nose, Santos nodded. “I’ve had more than a day to examine the interior, and it seems authentic other than the remarkable preservation.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. “As much as possible with no real gear or food. At least I had the one mummy to examine, but I couldn’t get back to the other one.”

  “This climate is too humid for mummification,” Wyn said, perking up. Interest gleamed in her eyes, and her tones held an excitement Zita couldn’t understand. “You’d need extreme aridity and temperature extremes for a mummy—even the human-created ones—to preserve them.”

  Her face warming with enthusiasm, the professor nodded. “That’s exactly what I said when we saw the first one on the altar in the temple. That one is female, I think, but she had no offerings around her, so perhaps a servant. In the caverns underneath, we found a wonderful mummy, a male noble given the finely worked clothing and grave goods surrounding him. While he was curled up in the style of Incan or Aztec mummies, he was on his side rather than sitting. This represents a whole new mummification ritual process. When the big blond man, Pretorius, took the Heart from him, he broke a few of the mummy’s fingers.”

  Jerome crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s never good.”

  Andy nodded in agreement and sidled another step away from the temple.

  Wyn frowned, coiling a strand of hair around her fingers. “How could they defile the mummy like that?”

  “Exactly!” Santos flashed an approving smile at Wyn.

  “It could be the teacher and the farmer from the wall pictures and yes, very uncool,” Zita said. She ran a hand over her hair, wondering how she had gotten drawn into the conversation. “Unless we want to join those in the graves, we need to get our culos in gear right now to stop that gem from leaving.”

  Wyn shook herself. “Of course. Sorry, Professor, we will have to postpone the academic discussions for another time, but if you all don’t mind, I’ll just take a quick peek at the mum
my.” She struggled back to her feet, her eyes beseeching Zita not to argue. Besides satisfying my curiosity, it might help me understand the spell on this place if the interior has anything different from the exterior.

  Santos shivered. “I’ve spent enough time inside contemplating her. I’ll wait here.”

  Zita sighed. “Fine, let’s make it fast though, and everyone grab food to eat on the go. We probably won’t have another chance before getting back to the entrance.”

  The others agreed and passed lunch around.

  “I’ll wait at the perimeter,” Andy said hastily, retreating to the tree line. Nibbling their food, Jerome and the professor joined him.

  The first to finish eating, Zita tapped fingers against her thigh while she waited. She eyed the temple. “Hey, Muse, can I get that candy I gave you? If another headache starts, I can gnaw on that and see if it keeps it away.”

  With a nod, Wyn withdrew the fist-sized chunk of rock candy and handed it over. “I doubt it’ll help, but good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Zita said, stuffing it into a pocket in her pants and closing it. She trailed Wyn as her friend entered the building.

  Dim and cool, the interior seemed bare without the usual Christian symbols and pews for worshippers. White walls swept upward, with simplified versions of the pictograms from the cave painted in red at eye level on all sides. While the nave was empty, the chancel bore a long sandstone altar engraved with local animals. Her eyes stung from the unpleasant odor in a corner, confirming the professor’s story about being locked here for more than a day. On the altar, a still form, dried skin stretched over bone, formed a huddled shape. One withered arm was flung out toward the back wall as if the person had lain on their side to sleep and had forgotten to wake.

  Zita crossed herself.

  Wyn spent a couple minutes studying the place and the body. “I suppose it’s only to be expected of a commission by a European with a conquistador’s stolen gem, but I’m disappointed that this building is pedestrian and Christian, rather than an example of ancient religious architecture. While the mummy is part of the spell, the focal point is somewhere beneath the temple.” Even though her words focused on the magic, she withdrew a scarlet cloth from her purse and draped it over the huddled form on the altar like a blanket, her eyes sympathetic.

  Zita glanced down at the hard-packed dirt floor and shook her head, retreating to the doorway. “We don’t have time to find and explore the undercroft.”

  After one more moment, Wyn joined her. She trudged toward the trees, a sigh escaping.

  Zita patted her friend’s arm. “No worries, Muse. Plenty of chances to geek out later.” Raising her voice, she called out, “We’re ready, vámonos.”

  With a groan, Jerome shouldered his backpack. “Right, no rest for the wickedly handsome or you guys. Let’s go.”

  Andy muttered under his breath.

  The professor cast a lingering glance at the temple and nodded.

  Once Wyn was back at Andy’s side, Zita took the lead on the deer trail—small dinosaur trail?—they’d followed to the clearing. She grinned. “On the bright side, we get to go down the cliff this time, not up. Should be fun, even for you bumbly sorts! The boys can jump and carry people, or we can rappel down with my ropes.”

  “Cliff?” Santos asked. “We took a dinosaur track of one of the larger species to get here, though we saw none of a size to create such a track. It took almost two days.”

  Zita beamed and held aside a fern. “If they moved that slow getting here, we can beat them back to the exit. I find the best shortcuts.”

  “Be still my beating heart. I can’t wait to be thrown off the cliff,” Wyn murmured.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On the ledge outside of the cavern entrance, the small group camped all night, with Andy, Jerome, and Zita taking alternating watches. Wyn and the professor had both been too exhausted to do more than eat, chat, and sleep once they had arrived.

  Perhaps her sensitivity had been heightened by the expectation of an imminent fight, but Zita found herself unable to sit still even more than usual and slept only lightly. To her, the waterfall’s thunder seemed to have changed cadence to a sound less regular, and all the scents around them were too sharp. All else was as they had left it.

  As she nibbled, her expression unenthused, on a late breakfast, Wyn lifted her head. “They’re coming.”

  Zita cleaned up the food and trash as fast as possible. “Does everyone remember the plan?”

  “Is it bad I want to make a joke about having the high ground?” Jerome said.

  Andy shushed him, but he gave a small, slight smile.

  Practically vibrating with eagerness to end the waiting, Zita stepped out of her shoes and handed those and the refuse of their meal to Wyn.

  Wrinkling her nose, Wyn tucked it all into her purse.

  Zita took a deep breath and ran through the strategy they’d sketched out during dinner the previous night. “Muse, you take cover and put the bear and Vaudeville and whoever else you can catch to sleep when you’re not undoing Tiffany’s spells. Chevalier goes for the shooter and Wingspan takes Pretorius and blocks the trail up. I’ll hide at the bottom until they get close, then steal the gem while they’re distracted. Professor Santos said Tiffany has it in her bag.” Each of her friends nodded as she detailed their part. At least this spot is reasonably defensible, with only the trail up as an option without climbing gear or flight, and the tepui walls covering two sides. Even if the ledge is only the size of a one-bedroom apartment, it’s got enough of the squat ferns and rocks to provide cover.

  The professor rubbed her arms, her face uneasy. Her pack had been stored inside the cave as soon as they’d arrived. “I’m to conceal myself in the caverns. If you lose or don’t come after me, I follow the murals out and ask the doctor camping on the highlands for help to go home,” she said.

  Zita nodded. “Right. I’ll get going.” With hope that the green feathers would make her hard to spot, she shifted to a mealy amazon parrot and flew down from the ridge.

  As she picked a place where she expected to be overlooked, Wyn called out from above. “The spell is becoming more unstable. The Heart needs to go back to the temple as soon as possible. Did I mention immediately would be good?”

  Before she could do more than nestle in the crown of a fern, Zita heard a familiar giggle. They’re here! Be ready.

  I only sense five minds incoming, Wyn sent. That is an ill omen for the poor local guide.

  Apparently forgetting their plan, Jerome charged down the path, rushing toward the approaching large Kodiak bear.

  As she watched, Jerome slipped and fell on his butt, skidding to a stop in a mass of greenery.

  The bear roared and slashed at him.

  With a cackle, Tiffany emerged from behind a clump of ferns. Long black robes, the bottom tattered and splattered with mud and broken greenery, hung off her skeletal frame. An embroidered mask hid half of her face. White gloves covered hands that wove in jagged patterns. The visible part of her face was haggard and worn, the first time she had ever appeared lacking makeup.

  It would’ve been wiser to be silent, but Zita’s mouth had even less patience than the rest of her. “How can you dress like a Halloween witch without the hat? If you lost your hat, we can help you find it.” In her parrot form, her voice was high and screechy.

  Soft chanting came from above. Tiffany requires a reminder of her schooling. She’s trying to summon her nasty creatures again, so I’ll put a stop to that foolishness.

  Andy slid down the trail and into a bush bristling with spines. He gave a girly yelp, then shouted, “Bananas!”

  With a shove to get the bear out of his way, Jerome stood. Distracted by the shapeshifter, he stepped on two peels and fell again. “No shit. Did someone bring bananas just for that?”

  Zita scanned the area. Where are Freelance and Pretorius?

  “Mine is the strength of ten men, for my heart is ridiculous,” Trixie said, gigglin
g. A flash of yellow gave away her hiding place behind a tree. She wore boots and khaki jodhpurs with a man’s evening coat in green camo colors, topped by a pith helmet. A small spike on top of the hat speared what was probably a plastic banana. Ignoring the gun strapped to her back, she instead dug through her backpack and threw a cigar at Zita. A lavender one that smelled like artificial grapes and sugar.

  Zita dove from her spot and flew through the ferns, inching closer to Tiffany. She’d seen Trixie throw things before and had no desire to be a target.

  The candy sliced off fronds along its path and stuck, quivering, in the plant where Zita had been hiding.

  “Watch out for the gum! It’s dangerous!” she squawked.

  “You bet your bubbles it is! Cavities are no joke,” Trixie sang as she launched another. Her face came into focus; beneath her ridiculous helmet, she wore thick glasses with thicker eyebrows atop them, a fake nose, and an enormous false mustache.

  “Surrender—” Tiffany called out. She stepped into Zita’s line of sight, her hands moving in a familiar series of gestures.

  “If she says Dorothy, I will laugh,” Andy gasped as he ran by and pushed Jerome out of the way of a bolt of plasma. A few spines stuck out jauntily from his now-disheveled braid.

  Tiffany continued, unaware of his interruption, “Surrender the white witch, and we might let some of you live!”

  Close enough. Andy snickered and charged Pretorius, who had moved from behind a fern to stand in front of Tiffany. Clad in sensible, long-sleeved green camouflage gear and boots, Pretorius drifted a foot from the ground… one hand glowing

  “Did you raid a Day of the Dead closeout sale for that mask?” Zita called out. “Come on, put the gem back! If you don’t, the spell holding this place together will fail!” To be safe, this time she changed her hiding place before another cigar flew her way, moving closer to Tiffany.

  At the sound of Zita’s voice, Tiffany snarled. “Forget mercy. Nobody cares. Get the white witch alive! Kill the others.”

  “I got Muse covered,” Jerome called out, hustling back up to the ridge.