“Did you see her face?” he asked.
Gemma closed her eyes, wincing at the terror that had marred the woman’s attractive face. “Yeah, for a split second.”
He held the flute out to her again. “Show me.”
“I said no,” she insisted.
“To find my brother Aiden,” he argued, “it was the woman with him who was the key. Maybe this time, I’ll know this woman as well. We have to take the chance. There’s something about this. Something…circular.”
Gemma ran her hands roughly through her shorn hair. She couldn’t deny Paschal’s impression—she’d felt it, too. The Roganovs, the Forsyths, the Gypsies, the K’vr—they’d all been interconnected for centuries. Nothing in her entire life had ever happened by accident. If she’d caught sight of that woman in Paschal’s presence, perhaps there was a reason.
She wanted to unravel this mystery. She wanted to explore the full breadth of her new ability. Could that override her apprehension? And what about Paschal? Could he survive another journey?
A vision of the present—or perhaps the future—might not tax Paschal as their previous journey together had. She supposed she had to try.
“Sit down,” she directed him.
He obeyed.
She took a begrudging seat beside him. “Yeah, now you start taking my orders.”
He held out his hand. “Let’s do this.”
She rolled the flute across her palm, gasping when her skin started to tingle. “I have to warn you,” she said, leaning back into the cushions and twirling the flute across her knuckles again, trying to re-create the circumstances of her journey. “When I last saw her, someone was shooting at her.”
Paschal groaned. “Then she must be with my brother. There’s something about Forsyth men that draws women to danger.”
She took his hand in hers and closed her eyes tightly. “Tell me about it,” she muttered, just before the world began to spin.
Sixteen
Unseen, Rafe pushed Mariah to the ground. He huddled over her, as if he could protect her in his insubstantial state. But he couldn’t. He’d saved her from a hail of bullets, but as long as he was a phantom, she had to rely on her own street smarts to stay alive.
“Remain down,” he ordered.
“No,” she argued, punching through him until he burst into a puff of colorful smoke.
With no time to indulge her shock, she clawed for the dilly bag and then crawled for the nearest cover behind a narrow stack of stone that, from a distance, looked to be part of the pyramid. It actually stood about a foot away, giving her just enough room to slide behind. Another gunshot exploded on the ground, sending shards of brittle limestone spiking against her skin.
From behind the obelisk, she grabbed Rogan’s marker and shoved it deep into a pocket on her pant leg, which she zipped closed. She also retrieved her 9mm Glock 19, which she’d loaded this morning after the chopper had first appeared. She couldn’t believe anyone had managed to track them this deep into the jungle. Yeah, she’d left some pretty obvious machete marks, but she’d doubled back twice and had forced the donkey to walk on the rockiest of paths in an attempt to hide his hoofprints.
Whoever fired those shots had been determined to find her. She’d have to be just as determined in order to escape.
“Rafe,” she whispered, her voice as much a prayer as a plea.
“I’m here,” he replied. He’d faded once again into nothingness—and for that, she was very grateful.
“You need to tell me exactly where the shooters are.”
“I understand.”
She felt his disappearance, and her chest ached from instant loneliness. She concentrated on checking her weapon, loading extra ammunition from her bag into her pockets and wrapping a sheathed knife around her middle and hiding it beneath her shirt.
“Ms. Hunter,” an unfamiliar voice called from just beyond the clearing. “I apologize for my associates. There was no need for gunfire. Please come out.”
Man. Educated. The accent was urbane, but American. Not the Mexican government official she’d stolen the coins from, though Mr. Friendly could be a mercenary hunter much like herself, hired to steal back what she’d taken for Velez. The rustling and cursing told her there were at least a half dozen men out there, likely all armed and waiting to get a clear shot at her.
Suddenly, Rafe joined her again. He sounded surprisingly out of breath. “Over your shoulder, to the northwest.”
She’d gotten turned around during their trek and barely knew which way was up. “Pretend a clock is behind me. Twelve midnight directly ahead. What time is he at?”
“Ten o’clock,” he replied. “And another at three.”
She spun out from behind the obelisk and fired four rounds—two in each direction Rafe had indicated. A flash of red and a scream punctuated the volley to her left, and she heard grunts and a crash to her right before she twisted back behind the obelisk. She couldn’t take them all out, but she needed to establish that she was just as armed and just as dangerous as they were.
“I’m not coming along quietly, mate,” she shouted. “And I’m not giving up my find. Just back off and no one else has to get hurt. Least of all me.”
She muttered the last part to herself.
Sounds of boots scraping on limestone alerted her that someone was attempting to come up from the other side of the structure. She was practically out in the open, alone and armed with only two magazines of ammo. She was certain she’d been in worse situations before, but she sure as hell couldn’t remember when.
“Rafe, around back. Is there anything you can do?” If he replied, she didn’t hear him, because the man below had called out to her again.
“You’ve proved yourself an able marksman, Ms. Hunter. Your show of strength is duly noted. But, please, I did not come all this way to harm you. I’m willing to negotiate for what I want.”
Mariah’s heart slammed against her chest with the force and rhythm of a native drum. A split second later, she heard the descending scream of someone falling off the pyramid on the other side. Rafe had done as she asked.
“That’s at least two down,” she replied. “Just how many men are you willing to sacrifice to get a bunch of old coins?”
“Coins?”
The man laughed—not exactly the high-pitched cackle of a typical B-movie villain, but damned close.
“I am not after your Mayan coins, Mariah Hunter. Yes, I know who you are. I know about your disagreement with Señor Velez, and I know that you were, less than a week ago, in a hard-to-reach corner of Germany that the locals called Valoren, the land of the lost. I also know that you took a stone from there, centered with a large fire opal that has, shall we say, special properties? I want that stone, Ms. Hunter. And I want it now.”
The tall obelisk she’d hidden behind began to shake. Sand and stone rained down as the structure began to break apart. With the dilly bag tight across her chest, she dashed for the nearest opening in the pyramid, only to be stopped by a second cascade of stone.
She spun around. This couldn’t be a natural occurrence. Earthquakes could be damned inconvenient, but they certainly didn’t happen on cue. The trees and earth around the pyramid were completely still. Amid the falling rocks and vines, she spotted a man in creased khakis standing just at the edge of the forest, holding aloft what looked like a shiny silver sword.
Who was he, He-man?
She raised her gun, but a bullet from the enemy caused the weapon to fly from her hand.
“Run, Mariah. Hide.”
With a shove, Rafe sent her flying down the side of the pyramid. She spun, uncontrolled, but while the air was knocked from her lungs, she felt nothing as she bounced against the stone. It was as if Rafe had wrapped her in a sheet of plastic bubbles as she fell.
Once at the bottom, she dove into a forest of plate-size leaves, trudging on her hands and knees until she found a fallen tree. Scuttling quickly, she discovered an opening in the rotted trunk and squeezed inside. She caught her breath and tried to decide what to do. She was armed now with only the knife. And while Rafe’s magic would come in handy about now, that pyramid hadn’t started to shake on its own. It seemed like the interloper had some major mojo of his own.
“You’re safe,” Rafe said.
“Not for long,” she whispered back. “He had magic, Rafe. Magic like yours.”
“Seems so,” he concurred.
“You have to fight him. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. It’s up to you.”
“I cannot. Merging with the Mayan magic, making myself solid in the light…I am drained. I expended the last of my energy protecting you from the fall. Talking to you now saps me further. I need to rest.”
She closed her eyes tightly. It figured that a few seconds of glorious sensation would cost her her life—and his.
***
The stench of Rogan’s magic clung to the air like death. Rafe was not a soldier. He was not a fighter. But he’d lost two women to Rogan’s evil. He would not lose a third.
He attempted to yet again weave his way back into the Mayan magic, but he failed. The threads were tenuous before, but now they simply melted away whenever he neared them. Filled with rage and fear for Mariah’s safety, he could not access the enchantments born of the land. Violence, even in defense of the woman who’d found him, was Rogan’s realm. The only magic he could use to save Mariah was the same magic that could destroy her.
He returned to the pyramid. Every inch of distance between him and Mariah—between him and the stone—stretched his powers thinner and thinner.
Four men gathered at the base of the clearing. One held a sword and watched while the other two tended to their fallen colleague. Rafe pushed himself closer.
Had he a body at this moment, the recognition of the weapon would have turned his heart to stone. The sword had belonged to Rogan. Rafe, along with so many others in the village of Umgeben, had watched the blacksmith forge it, had heard Rogan’s specific instructions for its design. The twisting golden handle. The thin, double-edged blade. The prominent fire opal embedded in the hilt.
Who was this man?
Rafe attempted again to snag one of the magical threads swirling around him, but it remained out of reach. The darkness he’d sought to deny burbled within him, but not with enough power to protect Mariah. And nightfall was hours away.
“Will he live?” the man with the sword asked his soldiers of the injured man, his tone dismissive.
The men’s clothes were mottled in greens and grays and blacks—shades that camouflaged them in the jungle. One lay on the floor, writhing, while the others wrapped his injury in cloth that had soaked through with blood. Another had a similar cloth around his arm. Mariah had fired off multiple shots. One man was no longer a threat. The other was merely incensed.
“Yeah,” the man with the injured arm spat. “But Juarez never returned when I sent him around back. Should I find him?”
Rafe’s confidence surged. The man named Juarez would not join his compatriots anytime soon. He was still alive, but trussed and gagged with jungle vines and leaves, an action that had cost Rafe a great deal of his energy—perhaps the last of it. That left three enemies to waylay long enough for Mariah to get to safety.
If only he were solid. If only he were not so spent.
The man with the sword stepped away from the cluster of men. He was undoubtedly the leader.
He gave the injured man a cursory glance. “Give him a shot of that whiskey you carry in your pack, Simmons, and get back to looking for the girl. She doesn’t have to die. Yet. I want the stone, but I also need to know precisely what she knows about it.” He glanced longingly at the sword again. “How to use it.”
“Yes, Mr. Pryce.”
Simmons dragged the injured man out of sight. The last man stayed beside Pryce. Though dressed like the others, he stood out from the rest. He was younger and wore a cluster of hoops around the top of his ear and another spiky stud in his nose.
“If she knew how to use the magic, she would have by now,” the young man insisted.
Pryce merely grinned. “Assumptions, Mr. Pyle, are dangerous. Particularly in light of the fact that Mariah Hunter has eluded us this far. I hired Simmons because he knows the terrain, and he and his men were supposed to be crack shots. And yet he missed.”
“I think that weird light blinded him. What was that shit?”
“That
shit
,” Pryce responded, his lip curled as if saying the word were the same as tasting it, “was magic. Unlike any I’ve ever seen, but then”—he lifted the sword and examined the blade as if he’d never truly appreciated the weapon before—”until I found this, magic was nothing more to me than a pipe dream. Now that I have it, I want to know precisely what it is capable of. I made the pyramid shake, but I’m not entirely certain how. I need the girl and that stone.”
“You’ll have them,” the younger man assured him, bowing his head. A flash of black and red at the base of his neck drew Rafe’s attention. He wore a brand of some sort.
A hawk, clutching a red stone in its talons.
The mark of Lord Rogan.
Rage nearly undid him. The instinct to strike out—to turn that cursed sword against the man who held it so cavalierly—nearly overtook him. But Rafe had not the power. He could feel the magic pulsing from the sword, as dark and vile as that which contained him.
Rafe returned to Mariah, hidden in the hollow tree. If she attempted to escape, they would find her. While Pryce might not kill her immediately, he did not seem the sort of man to leave loose ends behind.
“Can you remain out of sight until nightfall?”
The sudden sound of their assailants stalking through the underbrush answered the question for her. “I’m too close. It’ll be a piece of piss for them to find me here. I need to move.”
“Leave the stone,” Rafe instructed. “Bury it.”
Mariah’s eyes widened, but after a moment’s hesitation, she complied, twisting as quietly as she could until she could shove it deep into a crevice within the tree trunk, which she covered with rocks and moss and dirt. She maneuvered back to the opening. Though the men had not yet stumbled into this section of the jungle, they were not far away.
“Now what?” she asked quietly.
Rafe hated what he was about to propose, but he could not see any other way.