MayanCraving (9 page)

Moving apart, he tucked himself behind her. “Now,” he
whispered close to her ear. He kissed the sensitive skin of her lobe. “What do
you want to know?”

“Everything,” she said.

An hour later, exhaustion won out over curiosity and they
slept.

Chapter Seven

At dawn, Asher kissed Nancy’s cheek and went into the common
room, where Aileen and Ian were already preparing. Four-year-old Gwenneth
Scott’s large blue eyes glanced up from her breakfast when he closed the
courtyard door. With the lower half of her face covered in porridge, she
flashed a toothy grin. “Uncle Asher, you’re back,” she yelled.

He moved to the table and mussed her white-blonde hair
before kissing her nose, which was the only clean spot. She giggled and babbled
about all the things he had missed while he was away saving Aunt Nancy.

On the other side of the room, Aileen quickly packed a
duffle full of water, clothes and ammunition. She had pulled out several maps
from their collection. Since the End of Days, Aileen had tried to find as many
maps as she could and preserve them. Ian had spread several hand guns and
rifles on the floor.

Gwen seemed oblivious to the ruckus. “I’m going to spend a
few days with Jill,” the child informed him.

“Won’t that be nice!” he said about her visit to another
little girl in the community.

“You going with Mommy and Daddy?” she asked.

“Yup,”

“Is Aunt Nancy going away too?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer. Nancy’s voice cut in from
behind him. “I’m afraid so, Sweetie.”

“Aunt Nancy, did you have a sleepover?”

Ian chuckled from where he knelt over the weapons.

“Yes, I did.” Nancy gave Ian a hard look.

Asher could see the blush rising in her cheeks. “Aunt Nancy
will be having a lot more sleepovers here from now on.”

“Hooray!” Gwen clapped her porridge-covered hands just as
her mother tried to clean the goop from them.

Aileen managed to get Gwen’s face and hands clean as Jill’s
mother, Darleen, arrived to take charge. The proud parents stopped their preparations
and gave her their full attention, while telling her to behave and obey
Darleen.

Once the door closed behind the child, Ian turned to Nancy,
“You should rest. You don’t need to go back down there, Nancy.”

“I’m going,” she said flatly.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Ian directed the
question to Asher.

Asher smiled. “What would happen right now if you told
Aileen that she couldn’t go fight for our lives and the lives of our friends?”

Aileen pulled her long curly hair back into a ponytail, but
her arms stopped above her head while she waited for a response from her mate.

Ian sighed and shook his head. “I’d probably have something
hurled at my head, possibly a bolt of lightning, and she’d go anyway.”

“My point exactly.” Asher stepped forward to help with the
firearms. “I think we’re going to need some explosives. I don’t think this is
going to be like before. He’s stronger and I’m not sure if he’s just trying to
get into the world himself. It felt different. He used the women to create
something.”

“Nancy, do you agree with Asher?” Aileen asked. “You were
affected by the thing in the cave. Could there be something worse than Mictlan
entering our world?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I don’t know what it is, but
Mictlan will control it.”

Ian asked, “I know she’s been through a lot, but do you
think Robyn may be able to help?”

Nancy shrugged. “I don’t think we can afford not to ask
her.” She frowned as she left the adobe.

In only a few minutes, she returned with Robyn, Geoffrey and
Doc. Robyn stood four or five inches taller than her older sister. Rested and
clean, in borrowed jeans and a blouse, she appeared young. She regarded the
group, but her eyes remained aloof.

Geoffrey hailed from Northern California. At nearly seven
feet tall, he had to duck to get through the door. His hairline pushed away
from his face and he kept his frizzy hair too long. In fact, he seemed to be
opposed to cutting any of the hair on his head, and as a result, he looked like
a balding wooly mammoth. Despite his large gruff persona, he was soft spoken
and generally liked among the settlers.

The doc’s dark Native American eyes scanned the room.

Though his name was Whitefeather, everyone just called the
medicine man, Doc. He had a sturdy build and was just as good in a battle as he
was at the side of a hospital bed. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans, a cowboy hat
and a braid of black hair down his back. Asher always thought it a nice bit of
irony that the Doc dressed like a cowboy and not an Indian.

Doc had a deep voice and his words were rounded in a
Southwestern accent. “Robyn is not ready to relive the events of Chichen Itza.”

“Look,” Asher said. “I know you’re trying to protect her,
Doc, but we don’t have much time. We have to know what she knows.”

“Time will not save you if the beasts appear,” Doc said.

“The beasts?” Ian asked.

Doc sighed. He’d been up all night with his patients. His
exhaustion showed in his rounded shoulders and the dark rings under his eyes.
He sat down heavily on a stool near the hearth. “All the women speak of the beasts
that came for them, touched and took their spirit. Mictlan needs the devotion
of many to draw breath in this world and even more to raise the beasts that
will destroy all.”

In the years since Whitefeather had joined the settlement,
Asher had always thought him a kind of scary character. He used herbs in ways
that most people never dreamed. He healed, but his arts were mysterious and
foreign. However, he had never known the healer to be grim or hopeless, until
now.

“Are you saying we can’t win?” The idea that Mictlan would
defeat them agitated Asher’s anger. That Doc’s prediction was hopeless added
fuel to Asher’s rage, which was evident in his tight voice.

Doc looked up. “I’m saying it will be difficult. And even if
you manage to push the beasts down, you cannot kill them, only send them back
to Hell.”

“That would do, for now,” Ian said.

“Wait a second,” Nancy said. “What are we talking about
here? Robyn, what’s in the cave?”

Robyn’s small Southern voice rang clear in the small room.
“They’re not in the cave. They’re in our world. The beasts that will devour
every person one by one or twist them to The Lord of the Dead are already in
our world, but must go back to their own realm to draw energy.”

“Hold on,” Nancy said. “Is that how he creates the demons and
animals that follow him?”

Robyn nodded. “Some he creates here in our world, and
others, like the dragons, he brings from other places.”

Asher’s head reeled. “You’re saying these beasts have to
return to hell to recharge or whatever. I assume that part of the recharging
has to do with you and the others in that cave and what it did to you. He lost
his human batteries, so now they won’t be able to recharge, right?”

She looked up at him and it startled him how similar her
eyes were to Nancy’s. “He will find others, and in the meantime, he will kill
to create energy.”

“The sacrifices,” Nancy said. “What does that do?”

Doc took over the explanation. “Nothing really dies, Nancy.
We are energy, and when this body expires, that energy moves elsewhere. I
suspect that Mictlan knows how to harness those energies and use them for his
beasts to feed on.”

“Okay,” Asher said. “So, kill the beasts, send them back to
hell and figure out a way to eliminate his power source. No problem.”

Everyone looked at him.

Ian laughed. “No problem.”

* * * * *

The red clouds Mictlan brought to Chichen Itza shrouded the
sunset as they arrived just east of the old Mayan ruins.

Asher, Nancy and Geoffrey flew in the small Piper Twin
Comanche down to the meeting place a few miles from the pyramid, El Castillo.
Ian, Aileen and the others were driving down and would be a few hours behind.
The truck would bring more firepower, plus Aileen’s talents were indispensible
in a battle.

There was a lot of work to be done before the rest of the
group arrived. All three studied the map that Aileen had provided. They made
their way into the ruins and the trio hid behind the Temple of the Warrior
before climbing up to get a better view. Asher allowed himself only a moment to
think about the civilization that had built the compound and admire the one
thousand pillars spread out before them. The larger pyramid rose up directly in
front of them and the great ball court was just to the northwest of that.
Geoffrey moved away toward the ball court while Nancy climbed the pyramid.
Asher watched her set several charges at the top. She ran the fuse down the
side and he hid it under a basketball-sized rock.

A whistle sounded and Geoffrey waved wildly from the wall
near the Temple of the Jaguar. He pointed to the right, where two demons pulled
the body of a human across the sandy plaza. If the man lived, he gave no
indication. His naked body was thin, covered in bruises and raw torn skin. As
the demons dragged the body, it rolled toward Asher and Nancy and they could
see the open, dead eyes staring back at him.

Asher and Nancy crouched behind the stones to keep out of
sight.

“We have to do something,” Nancy whispered.

“There is nothing we can do for him.” Asher watched. His
stomach twisted with disgust. The man was already dead, sacrificed for
Mictlan’s purposes. Asher’s instincts prodded him to go kill those bastards who
dragged a human across the ground like he was garbage. However, doing so would
expose them and ruin the plan. But if they lost the element of surprise, they
could not succeed.

Nancy’s face filled with fury, which he shared, but there
was no time for emotion. They had a job to do. “Come on, Nance. We need to take
cover before we end up like that poor bastard.”

She nodded and carefully made her way back across the
grounds to the Temple of the Warrior to find better cover. Asher followed close
behind.

Asher looked around, surprised by the brightly painted sides
of the smaller pyramid. “This is new.” He touched the still tacky paint.

Nancy also stared opened mouthed at him and the strange
paintings. “What does it mean?”

Asher studied the walls more closely. There were several
symbols he could recognize. The Jaguar, painted in the center of the wall,
stood out as the most prominent, but to its left, a serpent coiled for attack
with its fangs bared. An eagle with bright-red eyes took up most of the upper
wall. Neither one of them could read the writing and the other symbols meant
nothing to them. On the opposite wall, a tree bloomed with dying flowers and
demons crawling from every limb.

They looked at each other, but neither spoke.

When Geoffrey finally joined them, he looked like he’d seen
a ghost. His skin was pale and his dark eyes wide.

“What?” Nancy asked.

“The ball court is full.”

“Full of what?” Asher asked.

His eyes were wide, but he didn’t say anything.

Asher’s stomach churned. “We did what we came for. Let’s get
out of here.”

* * * * *

Ian was already giving orders when they got back to the
meeting place. He turned to the threesome. “You all okay?”

“Okay for now,” Asher said.

Aileen rushed over and hugged them each in turn. “We were
worried. You took longer than planned. What happened?”

“We ran into some unexpected obstacles that required
investigation,” Asher said.

Ian joined them. “Care to share the knowledge?”

“Geoffrey better start,” Asher said.

The big man shifted his gaze back and forth.

“Go ahead,” Nancy prompted. “Tell them.”

He took a breath. For his size, he had a very soft melodic
voice. Now it sounded scared. “I went to look around while Nancy and Asher set
the charges, just like we planned. Everything seemed really quiet, almost too
quiet, you know. I figured I would take a look in that ball court we’d talked
about when we looked at the map. That’s when I found out why the rest of the
place looked deserted.”

Aileen reached up and touched his arm. It was a gesture she
used whenever someone was in distress. Her touch could be very calming. It was
part of her healing gift. “What did you see, Geof?”

“There must be a thousand of them,” he said, looking down at
her. “All chanting real low.”

“When you say ‘them’, you mean demons?” Ian asked.

“Demons, werewolves, those giant boars, they even have a few
dragons and those weird flying demons that look like gargoyles. And all of them
were looking toward the top pyramid and the demons were chanting.”

“What were they saying?” Aileen asked.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t English. It almost sounded like
Spanish, but I could only make out one word.”

“What word?” she asked.

“
Primavera
.”

“Spring.” Aileen translated. “Today is the first day of
spring.”

“I guess whatever they’re planning it’s going to happen
pretty soon,” Ian said.

“Nancy and I set the charges, but I’m thinking maybe Aileen
should set them off from the edge of the ruins with her lightning.”

“I thought you were going to light the fuse at the same time
we rush Mictlan.” Ian’s tone remained calm and authoritative.

“I think I have to get into the air and drop a few charges
into the ball court before we have a thousand demons to deal with on the
ground. We’re only a handful of people, Ian. We can’t win that kind of fight.”

“What do you need?” Ian agreed before Asher finished his
argument.

“Explosives, fuses and someone to drop the charges.”

Nancy turned to him. “I have to go with Aileen and show her
the target,” she said.

“I know.”

“Be careful.” She reached up and pulled his head down to
hers. The kiss was hard and laced with desperation. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He grinned much bigger than a man about to
face death should. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Always the optimist,” she teased.

* * * * *

The sun had set, leaving only the red glowing clouds to
light the way for the Piper. Torches surrounded the ball court and an enormous
flame burned on the top of the pyramid, El Castillo. Asher could only see the
flames from his vantage point several hundred feet in the air, but he imagined
Nancy leading the others to the ruins to wait for his signal.