by Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter
She had seen most of them around, had shared meals with at least three. But now they met her eyes with grim determination and no hint of apology.
Swallowing hard, she looked at the cave mouth, where the dreaded bat creatures were carved with their tattered wings spread, their catlike mouths split in silent stone screams. "Please. I can report the discovery without giving away your location. I'll do whatever you want; just don't make me leave now. I need more time."
She was borderline begging and she didn't care. She'd get down on her hands and knees and eat dirt if that was what it took. This wasn't just a career-making find; it was personal.
But the elder shook his head. Through Aaron, he said, "We are out of time. Tomorrow is the equinox, and the creatures are already walking among us."
"With all due respect, the legend of the camazotz comes from that." She pointed behind her at the tunnel mouth. "A carving. Stone. Maybe some priests in bat costumes. Whatever's killing your livestock, it's not a six-foot-tall demon with glowing red eyes."
Inwardly, though, she remembered the way Cooter used to growl, The locals know more about their home ground than you book-smart punks ever will . And she was acutely conscious of the hard lump in her zippered pocket. If solid rock could disappear and then reappear carved as something else, could she really be so certain that magic and the camazotz didn't exist?
She couldn't be, but that wasn't the point right now. "I need another month. One month, that's all."
The elder shook his head. "You have an hour."
Three men handed off their weapons and broke away from the group, unshouldering rucksacks she hadn't realized they were wearing. They knelt several paces away from the cave entrance, keeping wary eyes on the carved monsters as they started unloading flat boxes that were stenciled with U.S. military markings and the words CAUTION, EXPLOSIVES.
"You can't blow it up!" She lunged toward the men, but was brought up short when Javier grabbed her arm.
"Natalie, no!" As he dragged her back, she realized that the other villagers had brought up their weapons; their eyes were white rimmed, their fingers on the triggers. They were terrified, and terror could make people do awful things.
Like killarchaeologists.
She clutched Javier's forearm, her fingers digging in. "We can't let them destroy it!"
"Is it worth dying for?" His eyes flared with the temper he reserved for when she was doing something really stupid.
"Yes! I found—" She broke off, unable to telll him why. "Damn it."
He shook her. "It's just a ruin. Let's get our stuff and get out of here, like the man said."
But she couldn't do that. No way. Her mind raced. How could she— Oh, hell. "I need to talk to JT," she blurted.
She would do anything she could to save the sacred chamber where she had found the crystal skull. Even grovel to the one man she had ever come close to falling for . . . and who had dumped her flat when she'd told him so.
Chapter Three
JT's bungalow, which was a cross between a bunker and the jungle version of a bachelor pad, was surrounded by a twenty-foot-high stone wall topped with wickedly pointed chunks of jade and obsidian. The stones sparkled in the fading sunlight that glinted down through the gap that the walled compound made in the rain-forest canopy.
When the gates were closed, there was no getting inside.
They were closed.
Natalie's heart sank as she let the Jeep roll to a stop. She was going to have to get out and use the intercom panel. Let the groveling begin.
She hated this. But the villagers had agreed to give her an hour, and the clock was ticking.
A quick look assured her that the fireproof lockbox under the driver's seat was secure. After the run-in with the locals, she had locked the crystal skull away. She was dying to carry it with her, but she'd be devastated if she lost it. What was more, she didn't trust JT not to hand it over to the villagers if he thought that would settle things down. He had made it brutally clear that he had his life exactly the way he wanted it and didn't intend to do—or let her do—anything to upset that balance.
Well, what do you expect from a guy who's got FREEDOM inked in big letters on his forearm?
Her exes would probably appreciate the irony of her being on the receiving end of the "it's not you; it's me" letdown.
Embarrassment—it wasn't heartbreak despite what Javier thought—churned in her stomach as she headed for the touchpad next to the gate. Mildly resenting the fact that he'd never given her the code, she leaned on the buzzer, then stared up into the security camera, trying to fake a pleasant "let's just be friends" smile.
There was no response.
She didn't know which was worse, the thought that he wasn't home . . . or that he was.
After buzzing a second time, she hit the intercom. "JT? It's Natalie. This is business, okay? Not personal. Let me in."
Still nothing.
"Shit." Now what? She couldn't call him with the satellite transmissions on the fritz, which left . . . nothing. A chill skimmed through her at the knowledge that she was forty minutes away from losing the biggest find of her career, along with the first tangible link she had managed to uncover in nearly a decade of searching for something—anything—connected to the locket she had been found with as a baby. Frustration slapped through her, making her skin itch, but she reminded herself that she still had the skull. That was something, right? But the itches didn't subside.
She turned and headed back to the Jeep. She had made it halfway there when the background forest noise went silent. And she realized with sudden sickening clarity that the itch wasn't frustration after all. It was a warning!
The instincts she had been ignoring suddenly lashed at her, through her, bringing images of jaguars and the recent livestock kills in the area. She was a woman walking out alone, unarmed.
Stupid move, Nat. Her heart leaped into her throat as she lunged for the Jeep, and the weapon within it.
She was a few paces short of the vehicle when a dark blur erupted from the greenery and slammed into her, sending her crashing into the side of the Jeep and then down. High-pitched squeals battered her eardrums, making her head ring, and she screamed as a dark-furred, red-eyed creature leaned over her, its batlike face splitting into a three-cornered leer of moist, inhuman hunger that she had seen before, carved in stone.
Camazotz!
Instead of arms, it had elongated wings with tattered sails and wickedly barbed claws at the ends of the bony struts. Its dark brown, almost black skin was covered with patches of mismatching fur, and it smelled terrible, like a rotting animal carcass. The miasma brought tears, though not before she saw up close and personal that it was male, its long penis tipped with a leaflike flattening.
Panicked, she tried to worm her way under the Jeep, screaming, "Help me!"
A pair of claws hooked her arm, dragged her out. Pain slashed through her. Terror. Sobbing, she kicked at the creature, but caught only air as it hauled her upright, screeching almost above the level of her hearing.
Its mouth split wide, revealing a black cavern of a throat framed by long, curved teeth.
"Help!" Natalie thrashed against the creature's hold. She was all alone, in the middle of nowhere, JT wasn't home, and—
Automatic gunfire slammed out of the nearby forest and into the bat creature.
The bullets ripped into the thing's upper body, blowing back a spray of blackish blood and chunks. The creature reeled and dropped her. But incredibly, horribly, it spun toward the new threat as black ichor rained down from its wounds.
Seeing the flash of a weapon and the curve of a man's shoulder in the forest, Natalie scrambled up and screamed, "Kill it!"
"Get down!"
She flung herself flat as a heavy thump split the air and a fist-size missile caught the creature in the midsection and then detonated. Hot, oily black sprayed and the thing flew backward and went down in a limp mass.
"Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." Natal
ie lurched to her feet as her rescuer emerged from the rain forest, cradling a big double-barrell across his body.
On one level she recognized JT; she knew his voice, knew the way he moved. On another level, though, the man who stepped out of the shadows and into the fading sunlight was a stranger.
The JT she knew was clean shaven, well dressed, a strangely urbane oasis in the middle of the tropical wilderness. The JT who faced her now shared the same powerful five-ten frame, skull trim, and cool gray eyes. But he wore several days' worth of scruff and hard-used bush clothes, and his body was strung bandolier-style with an arsenal of weapons and ammo. He carried himself with the tough purpose of a soldier, moving on the soundless feet of a hunter. And he had just saved her ass.
He once told her the guns in his foyer were for hunting the occasional man-eater among the big cats in the area. Now she knew different.
"Chan camazotz," she whispered, the nickname the villagers used for him. Death-bat killer. She had thought it was a metaphor.
Apparently not.
His eyes were hard and hot, almost feral. "Did he get you?"
A harsh, ugly sob ripped itself from her chest. "That was . . . It was . . . Oh, JT!" She flung herself at him.
He caught her, his arms banding around her with crushing force. Relief poured through her as she burrowed into him, feeling the solid strength of his muscles and the way her body fit against his. His warmth surrounded her, and his voice was raspy when he said her name, over and over again, into her hair. At first she thought she was shaking with fear and shock. Then she realized she wasn't the one shaking.
"JT?" She pulled away a little so she could look up at him. "What—"
He interrupted her with a kiss.
There was nothing soft or urbane about his lips on hers this time, nothing civilized about the way he crushed her mouth with his, the way he gripped her. But she was suddenly hanging on to him just as hard.
Heat flared through her, sweeping away the silent agony of the past three days, the heartache, anger, and loss of thinking it was over between them. Because there was nothing "over" about this kiss. It was blatantly carnal and possessive, and everything inside her screamed to be possessed by him.
"What happened to 'I'm not that into you'?" she whispered against his lips.
He slid his hands from her shoulders to her waist, then down to cup her buttocks and lift her up against his prominent erection. "I lied."
She knew she should be demanding explanations, but she couldn't focus on anything but his taste on her lips and tongue, his hardness against her. She was on fire for him, feverish for his touch. Her fingers trembled as she worked her hands under his shirt, fighting the constraints of his weapons.
"Off," she ordered. "Take it all off." The world spun around her, flaring hot and cold. He said her name, tried to ease her away, but she clung, needing his heat and strength. She had no filter left, no inhibitions. She whispered what she wanted to do to him in vivid and graphic detail, the words tumbling from her as she cupped him through the tough fabric of his bush pants.
He sucked in a rattling breath. "Natalie." He caught her wrist. "We can't—"
Pain slashed through her and she cried out, nearly went to her knees.
He cursed and shifted his grip on her arm. "Fuck. He got you."
She stared at the ugly slice that ran the length of her right forearm. It was red and meaty, and the edges of the cut were stained black. The raw heat within her flashed from lust to fever in an instant, and she swayed, disoriented.
"Is it . . ." She didn't finish the question, her words scattering.
"Just a tranquilizer," JT said, his voice rough. "It's on their claws. But don't worry; I've got you.
Everything's going to be okay. I'll take care of you, make sure nothing bad happens to you."
But as the world grayed out, her gut said he was lying again.
She just didn't know which part was the lie.
JT eased Natalie to the ground. Her too-pale skin was a stark contrast to her straight, dark hair, and her long dark lashes failed to hide the bruised circles beneath her eyes. Her tipped-up nose and subtly pointed chin, which added to her air of boundless energy when she was up and moving, now made her look delicate. Breakable.
If he hadn't gotten there in time—
"No looking back," he reminded himself. He had gotten there in time. Barely.
And now he had to finish the job.
Standing, not letting himself think about anything but the task at hand—because a distracted soldier was a dead one—he pulled his knife from the scabbard he wore on his thigh. Machete-size, but with its blade edged in a double layer of sacred stones—obsidian and jade—it was the only thing he'd found that could do the job.
When he crouched down beside the ' zotz, he saw that it was most of the way healed, probably just getting ready to start twitching. Although the jade-tipped ammo and jade-filled grenades knocked them down better than ordinary bullets, the fuckers didn't stay down if they were intact.
Which was where he came in.
With one clean motion, he slit the thing's throat. As air gurgled and blackish blood leaked into the dirt, he steeled himself, grabbed the ' zotz's thick, sinewy penis, and did a Bobbitt on it. That part never got easy—it was a guy thing. But the second he had the creature's limp, creepily warm dick in his hand, the ' zotz puffed to oily brown smoke and all of it—blood, dick, corpse, the works—disappeared.
"Go to hell," JT muttered. He was no magic user, but the phrase had become his own personal incantation.
With the ' zotz gone, he returned to Natalie, picked her up, and carried her through the gate into the compound, not letting himself think of what he would've come home to if he'd gotten there a few minutes later.
He carried her over the threshold and into the house, through the main room, and into his bedroom.
Logic said she would have been fine on the couch, but the toxin would keep her asleep through the night, so she might as well be comfortable.
Gritting his teeth, he got her out of her torn, fight-stained clothes and into a tee and sweats that swallowed her small, delicate frame. To his surprise, the wound on her arm was neatly scabbed, with none of the swelling or redness he'd seen the few times he'd been able to get a victim away from a ' zotz. still, he cleaned the cut and scrubbed the worst of the sticky ichor off her skin.
By the time he got a bandage on her arm, he was strung tight from a mental slide show of what could've happened if he hadn't gotten back when he did. He shouldn't have taken off into the forest in the first place, shouldn't have—
"Fuck." He lurched away from the bed and headed for the main room, slamming a lid on the what-ifs and making himself deal with the shit he could do something about.
First he armed the security system. Then, while he changed out of his hunting clothes and knocked off the worst of the grime, he pulled his phone out and hit up Rez. The call went through, but the connection was shit, with lots of static surrounding a garbled, ". . . never seen anything like it. The damned thing hit us out in the open, right in front of the cave."
JT's blood chilled. Son of a bitch. That was why there had been only one after Natalie. The other one had attacked the temple. "Any casualties?"
"Only the ' zotz. Did you find your girlfriend?"
Knowing that Rez was harping on the "girlfriend" thing to get him back for disappearing, JT ignored it. "She's sleeping off a claw scratch. Did any of her people see the ' zotz?"
"No—" Static interrupted. When Rez's voice cut back in, all JT got was, ". . . back at their tents.
They didn't see anything."
That was something good, at any rate. Limited the need for damage control. "Get them out of here."
"They won't go without her."
"Make them." JT would've handed her over to her teammates, but he didn't want to have to explain the half-day coma. More, he would need to talk her down when she woke up, find some way to convince her that she had wrecked
the Jeep, banged her head, and hallucinated the rest of it. Note to self: Roll the Jeep into a ditch down the road.
"About the temple," Rez began, his words barely audible through the static. ". . . council wants to know what you think."
"Blow it," JT said without hesitation. Over the past few years, the villagers had sealed five other caves that showed evidence of ' zotz activity. Each time, the demon attacks had skipped a couple of cycles. "Then get Natalie's team out. Tell them she's with me, and she'll meet them at the embassy in a couple of days."
"Will do."
JT cut the call, rubbing his chest, where regret ached. Shit, he hated the idea of blasting an actual temple, rather than just an ichor-encrusted cave—ancestor worship was hardwired into his DNA, he supposed. But he'd been searching for the bat-demons' sacred sites, had even talked the council into letting Natalie's team stay in the hopes that their fancy equipment would lead them to pay dirt. And it apparently had, only he hadn't been there to manage the fall out.
Some fucking protector he'd turned out to be.
That failure, too, was probably hardwired. Despite two tours in the Middle East, he knew too damn well that—in this war, at least—his people weren't supposed to be the frontliners. His job was defense and mop-up.
"Shit." He scrubbed his hands over his face, suddenly feeling his age. He wasn't near village-elder territory yet, but his body sure felt that way all of a sudden. "Get some shut-eye," he told himself. "The perimeter's secure."
As secure as he could make it, anyway, given that the' zotz suddenly weren't playing by the old rules, the ones that said they came through the barrier only two at a time, and stuck together once they were out of the underworld. Which meant . . . Hell, he didn't know what it meant. But it wasn't good.
Knowing he should hit the couch, he headed for the bedroom instead. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the gentle rise and fall of Natalie's chest and seeing the stark white of the gauze four-byfours he'd taped to her arm.