by Jane Cousins
Bloody Hell.
The tree woman’s eyes were a shimmering light golden brown. “If you want to live, you need to come with me.” Her voice was low and firm, accented slightly but English.
Matias’s whole body jerked when he heard that voice. Copper!
Enforcers went with their gut. And Jodie’s was telling her rabid, half animal creatures - bad, woman dressed as tree - good.
That’s how she found herself running through the jungle, trying her best to follow a woman who flowed through the dense undergrowth like she was part wood sprite, part bloody air elemental. And Jodie was pretty damn sure the woman was deliberately moving slower than she normally would because of her.
It was tough going. Trying to scramble through the thick ground covering, keep her pace up, avoiding the traps the tree woman pointed out with rapid hand signals and at the same time utilise all the woodcraft skills she’d been taught over the years in order to keep her noise levels to a minimum.
She wasn’t a novice when it came to field work. Elijah trained his Enforcers mercilessly in all types of environments. And if she needed an incentive to keep up the pace then the sounds of high pitched yelps and guttural snarls echoing through the jungle behind them worked exceedingly well.
She zagged when the tree woman abruptly zagged. Amazed to find four storey rock walls crowding her closely on either side, filtered sunlight flickering through the gap high overhead. They didn’t slow their pace. They turned left down a narrower pathway, scrambled over some fallen rocks. Turned left again, ducked low and shot through a short but enclosed tunnel before emerging into another sunlit narrow ravine. Up ahead somewhere she heard water falling and a bird cawing. Suddenly the tree woman stopped running, lifting her palm to warn Jodie to cease moving also.
Cocking her head, the woman listened intently. “I think we’ve lost them. They don’t like the ravines.” Her voice just above a whisper.
“Who are they? What the hell is going on?”
The tree woman turned and eyed Jodie up and down slowly. “Not here. Just a little way further and we can rest and have something to drink.”
Jodie had little choice but to follow her guide. They wound their way through four more tight ravines before climbing up several naturally formed steps into a tunnel located about half way up what looked like a sheer rock face.
Jodie emerged at the end of the tunnel, blinking, wide eyed to find herself in a small cavern that had a rather picturesque view of a wide, slow moving river down below. She nodded with gratitude as the tree woman held out a gourd shaped object.
“Fresh water? It’s safe to drink.”
Jodie gulped down the water fast. She was so parched. Her whole body felt over-heated, her heart beating too fast. Control. Breathe. “Where am I? What the hell is going on?”
The tree woman leant against the nearest wall, her movements graceful and economical. Now that they were up close, Jodie could see the woman had used layers of palm leaves and mud to cover her entire body from her toes to the tips of her long, slicked back hair. She had a rope around her waist, with two small rough looking brown bags tied to it. And thin vines twisted around her upper arms, holding in place several small twigs and a blowpipe.
“You’re lucky my people didn’t find you first. They’re not overly fond of strangers. Particularly those found on the haunted stretch of beach. Though.” The tree woman eyed Jodie with avid interest. “Perhaps I’ve just discovered exactly who has been haunting it for the last few years.”
Haunted beach? Nothing was making sense. “What was that… creature? Did you kill it?”
“Yes. Lost my favourite spear to boot, damn. And I call them Jag-offs. It’s a long story.”
“And you speak English?”
“Clearly. Where are you from? What year?”
“Year?” Jodie shook her head. That was a weird thing to ask, wasn’t it?
“Look kiddo. You turned up on my beach. And I saved your skinny ass. If you’re stuck here and expect me to take you under my wing, then you’d better start talking.”
“Stuck here? Where the hell am I?”
Tree woman issued a soft sigh. “Let’s start with the easy questions. What’s your name?”
“Jodie. Jodie Holden”
“Okay Jodie, you can call me K’in. When we’re alone, you can call me Copper.”
“Copper?”
“Yes, Copper. Copper Yanez.”
“Yanez?” Jodie frowned. “There are two brothers that moved to my town a year or so ago with the last name Yanez.”
Copper’s glowing golden eyes turned hard and intent. “Their names? What are their names?”
“Nico… Nico and… Matias.”
“No!” Copper was suddenly looming over Jodie. “No! No!... Shit!” Copper’s light golden eyes fairly blazed. “You have to go back where you came from and tell them… tell Matias not to come. Not to try and find me.”
Jodie was on her feet, Copper’s fear was palpable. “I don’t understand.”
“How did you get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Damn it.” Copper paced the small cavern. “I didn’t waste the last ten years of my life playing at being a Goddess to have it all fall apart now.”
Jodie didn’t understand anything Copper was saying but she read clearly the mix of anger and fear radiating from her. If only she had a clue as to what was going on she might be able to offer to help. Jumping slightly as Copper came to a stop before the sheer rock wall and lashed out at it suddenly. Issuing a sound of pure frustration. Blood arcing outwards, splattering Jodie’s top.
Jodie grabbed Copper’s arm as she pulled it back in preparation for another futile punch, looking down at the bloodied knuckles. “That isn’t helpful. Talk to me. Tell me what I can do to help?”
Copper pulled her arm away from Jodie’s hold, not even bothering to glance down at the mess she’d made of her hand. “You need to tell Matias to stay away, from me, from this place. If he doesn’t… the world will end. The eternal dark will swallow the light, the shattered sun, and we will all die. Can you remember that?”
“Yes. But now what?” Jodie looked around.
“Good question. Is it the beach? You always seem to appear there.”
“I do?” Jodie was confused by that statement but it was making about as much sense as anything else that had happened today. “Maybe we can head back there once the coast is clear and all the… Jag-offs have retreated to their lair. Is there anything else I should know?”
“So much.” Copper laughed but it was without humour. “But it will be a good use of our time whilst we wa-”
Jodie gasped, suddenly everything had become out of focus, and she felt herself abruptly being pulled sideways, losing her grip, she was disintegrating, everything was happening too fast. The world blurred, the colours all bleeding together and then it just dropped away. It was too much, as Jodie slipped into unconsciousness.
Chapter Seventeen
The hospital room was silent for a brief moment before everyone started talking at once. Elijah and Matias hammered Jodie with relentless questions. Whilst Quinn did her best to get the two of them to calm down and back off.
“Wait!” Nico actually bellowed. Everyone but Nell who was talking low and fast on her phone paused to look at him. “I recognised that tattoo. The one over the Jag-off’s heart, the one that attacked Jodie and Copper killed. Kristiah had that same tattoo. She called it the shattered sun and it had this weird black edging as if a shadow were about to engulf it.”
“That creature on the beach was Kristiah?” Matias frowned, trying to make the connections.
Nico shook his head. “No. The body type didn’t match. The skin tone too dark. But if that is the symbol for those… things… then…”
“Perhaps their human physiology changes when they turn into those creatures.” Quinn observed.
“The head, arms and legs appear to change but the torso was human and those breasts didn’t be
long to Kristiah.” Nico stated with grim conviction.
“Are you saying that day on the Merry Maverick that Kristiah turned into one of those creatures and killed everyone on board? Our parents?” Matias choked out the questions.
“Yes. I think so.” Nico was unnaturally pale.
“Cara is on her way. Her research has paid off.” Nell announced, cutting through the sudden tension. “She’ll be here in two minutes.”
It was a hellish two minutes, doubly so for Jodie, who had both an insistent Elijah, and a determined Nico, demanding continual skin to skin contact with her. Elijah resting a large calloused palm over her bare wrist, whilst Nico was relegated to the end of the bed, gripping her lower leg, just above the sock. Not awkward or uncomfortable at all.
Jodie had to bite her lip to keep back the tidal wave of questions that threatened to erupt. Like, what the hell was going on? How had she ended up on that beach? Why were the Yanez brothers involved? And how had their sister, who no one had ever heard about before, ended up dressed as a tree in a South American jungle battling half jaguar women and claiming to be a Goddess?
But one of the many lessons she’d had to learn over the last three years, during her Enforcer apprenticeship, was knowing when to keep her mouth shut. And this was obviously one of those moments. The tension in the room practically beating against her skin. Elijah alert. The Yanez brothers shocked but grimly determined. Quinn concerned, her gaze constantly straying to a clearly boiling beneath the surface Matias standing next to her. Hmmm, more than concern there… my, my, always cool in a crisis - with never a hair out of place - cousin Quinn was interested in Matias Yanez.
Following a soft knock, Nell opened the hospital room door. Cara entered, dressed in a dark wine coloured skirt and a black blouse with two buttons missing. Her clear blue eyes behind the cat framed glasses she wore were sparkling with enthusiasm as she scanned the occupants of the room. Her heavy mass of red gold hair twisted back in a knot. And from the number of writing instruments wedged carelessly into the mass, it was clear Cara had been on a research binge of epic proportions.
“Hey everyone.” She held up a folder. “We have a lot to get through. So let me hit the highlights and then you can ask questions, okay?” Cara, only recently having learned of magic, seemed to take it in her stride that Jodie was lying fully dressed and fully armed in a hospital bed whilst two men kept a constant hold on her.
“Thanks for doing this Cara.”
Cara smiled at Nell. “Any excuse to spend time in the library vault makes me happy. But I need to make this fast. I left Erik yesterday in a sculpting fugue, any moment he’s bound to come out of it and wonder where I am.”
“So, what did you find?” Quinn enquired.
Flipping open the folder, Cara began. “Everything you gave me. The obsidian knife, that image of the shattered sun being chased by eternal darkness, and let’s not forget the half Jaguar women. It all helped me narrow down what was probably on the Santa Maria Rosa and what this whole messy tale is about. Let me tell you about the Mayan legend I came across, and hopefully this will all begin to make some sort of weird sense. It all starts with a Mayan High Priest, Gap’gn, and his quest for immortality. He was just your average power hungry asshole, surrounding himself with a dozen nubile teenage girls he called his Priestesses. An alarming number of horrific blood sacrifices followed. And whilst Gap’gn wasn’t successful in unlocking the key to immortality, he did manage to attract the attention of Ixchel. A Jaguar Goddess who many equate erroneously with midwifery and medicine. Really she was the bringer of life, created from the sun, aligned to heat and light.”
“They hooked up?” Elijah growled.
“Yes. And the more time they spent together, the more powerful Gap’gn grew. According to legend he gifted his female followers with the ability to turn into Jaguars… perhaps hyperbole given you’ve only seen them in a hybrid form. But all that wasn’t enough for Gap’gn. He wanted more power. According to my reading, he tried to kill Ixchel. Ripping out her heart. They struggled and Ixchel’s heart shattered. Ixchel escaped, returning to her home in the sun, weakened dramatically. Gap’gn gathered her shattered heart and ate it… all except for one large shard that a brave villager snuck in and stole. Handing it to a foreign priest, and begging him to take the shard to a far away land where it would be safe from Gap’gn.”
“That was what was supposedly on the Maria Rosa? A piece of a Goddess’s heart?” Nico looked bemused.
“Yes. According to my research, Gap’gn had secretly thrown his lot in with Cum Hua, the God of the Underworld. That was how he was able to rip out Ixchel’s heart, with a hollowed out obsidian blade made in the bowels of the earth. Their plan was for Gap’gn to swallow Ixchel’s heart, effectively destroying all light, all life. Cum Hua would then emerge from the dark depths and bring the underworld to the physical plane and rule the world with Gap’gn as his number one lackey.”
“Shit. None of that sounds good.” Elijah growled out the statement through clenched teeth. “So how do we defeat some scum bag who lived over five hundred years ago and can send his devoted half Jaguar… Jag-off minions through time, to do his bidding?”
“We have to stop him. Some how. And get Copper back.” Matias urged.
“Copper can’t stay there. We have to rescue her.” Nico chimed in.
“You need to save the world.” Cara interrupted. “If Gap’gn gets his hands on that last shard, then the world will cease to be as we know it. Eternal darkness will eat all life, and the Underworld will rise up.”
“Any ideas on how we can go about achieving any of that?” Nell asked.
Cara shook her head. “The time travel business is out of my purview. But I suggest when you do get back there, you enlist the aid of the Goddess K’in.”
“Copper!” Everyone in the room said her name at once.
It was Nico who brought Cara up to speed. “When we viewed Jodie’s memory of her visit to the past, she met with our sister, Copper, who told her that she was a Goddess and her name was K’in.”
“Really? Fascinating.” Cara’s eyes narrowed behind the frames of her glasses. “Oh, yes, I can see where all that makes sense then. I found an old legend stating that the Goddess of Fire and Justice, K’in, rose up to oppose Gap’gn. Keeping her people safe from his evil, blood-thirsty intentions and thwarting his quest to gain even more power and bring an end to the world.”
“How does it end? Between K’in and Gap’gn?” Quinn asked, suddenly worried.
Nell likewise looked perturbed. “Does she kill him? Does she win?”
“Not according to what I read. K’in created a Guardian. His one and only job was to protect the last Shard of Ixchel’s power. When Gap’gn found the Guardian there was a huge battle.”
“And?” Elijah asked the question everyone else was too polite to ask.
Cara shrugged. “I don’t know. The records are sketchy and until you told me about the hybrid Jaguar women and your sister running around in an ancient jungle claiming to be K’in, the Goddess of Fire and Justice… well, I would have told you it was all just smoke and fairy-tales.” Cara looked pensive for a moment. “There was one more thing about K’in.”
“What? What aren’t you telling us?” Nico looked liked he wanted to leap across the room and shake the information out of Cara.
“It’s confusing, but there was a claim by K’in’s people that one day, Ah Tabai, the God of the Hunt appeared, fell in love with K’in, and took her away.”
“What do you mean by took her away? And who the hell is Ah Tabai?”
Cara shrugged, looking truly apologetic. “Sorry. I could try and get more but the scroll I was dealing with is beyond ornery. I don’t believe there is anything I can do to coax it to let me read any further.” Cara glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, I’m leaving you with more questions than answers.”
“Considering we’re talking time travel, Gods, and a High Priest who gifts women with the ability to turn into
half Jaguar creatures, I think you’ve delivered beyond any of our expectations.” Nell shot her a thankful look. Several of the others murmured their thanks also. Only Matias and Nico were too busy looking concerned to thank Cara as she left the room.
“Okay.” Nell looked around the room. “So let’s start putting this together.”
“Kristiah must have been working for Gap’gn. Looking for that missing Shard.” Nico gritted out. “She told us she’d been looking for a few years. But based upon what we now know, I’m guessing she’d been searching for closer to five hundred years. Probably since the moment the Santa Maria Rosa left the harbour. It going down in that storm was in actual fact a lucky break.”
“Kristiah tries and fails for centuries to find the wreck.” Matias looked equally grim. “Then she some how learns about Mama’s research skills and Papa’s nose for treasure. I’m guessing if we investigate Mama’s old university friend, we’ll find he, his wife, and if they did have a daughter, all died under mysterious circumstances.”
“That hollowed out obsidian blade that cut out the Goddess Ixchel’s heart was one of the item’s you brought up from the Maria Rosa wreck. The one you first mistook for a tablet of some kind. It must have contained or been connected somehow to the missing Shard.” Quinn contributed.
“Do we really think there is a missing piece of a Goddess’s heart out there somewhere?” Elijah looked dubious.
“Maybe it’s the blade itself. It was forged by the God of the Underworld. Or maybe the hollowed out blade just contains whatever it is the villager stole. At this stage everything points to the blade being important and somehow connected to the Shard. The one thing we do know is that Gap’gn wants it. A man who is capable of creating wacky hybrid creatures and sending them back and forth through time. Whatever the Shard is, I’m guessing we don’t want the power hungry asshole to get his hands on it.” Quinn offered her thoughts.
“How?” Everyone in the room looked at Jodie, speaking up for the first time. “I mean the time travel part? How did I travel to where Copper is? And how did I get back?”